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115 of 152 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read it first, then judge, September 5, 2007
A rash of best selling books that attempt to use science to prove that materialism, such as Richard Dawkins' new book, have appeared on the market in the past few years. The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul was written by a well qualified PhD level neuroscientist at the University of Montreal who attempts by use of laboratory experimental research to evaluate the claims of the nonmaterialist account of the living world. The coauthor is a journalist, insuring that the book is readable and assessable to the general public. The team was very successful in this work, to say the least. This book is a welcome response, based on scientific research, to the claims of materialists, the theory that life and the universe contains only matter and motion and nothing more. The idea commonly espoused by materialists that no soul, no mind, and no free will exists is effectively challenged by the peer reviewed empirical research reviewed in this book. The authors document that the nonmaterialists approach to the human mind has a long and fruitful tradition and much evidence behind it even today. The authors conclude that this worldview accounts for the evidence much better than the relatively new, and currently largely stagnate, materialist worldview. The materialist tradition not only attempts to explain everything by appealing to the motion of matter only, but has now moved far beyond this, discouraging researchers from even considering the possibility that matter and the four forces explains everything, and thereby limiting research by their straight jacket which stifles science. Science must research every area that may be fruitful, as well as some areas that may not at first appear fruitful. A major conclusion of the materialists argument is that humans have no free will but, if one could understand the position and movement of the brain molecules, one could always predict the behavior of the person. Cornell professor William Provine has articulated this position very well, as has many of his students. As Oxford University Professor Richard Dawkins explains, free will is just an illusion created by the electrical charges in the neurons in our brains, nothing more. These and other highly respected scientists even question the wisdom of punishing criminals because, if there is no mind and no free will, then criminals are victims of their mechanical material brain. Does the evidence support this view? Read this book and judge for yourself. No matter which view you hold you need to at least be aware of the other side. It was my conclusion that most readers will agree that materialist blinders interfere with the freedom to follow the evidence no matter where it leads.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The authors of The Spiritual Brain hit a neuroscientific nerve, February 18, 2009
Few books stimulate so many diverse and passionate reviews as "The Spiritual Brain." I award five stars as a layperson not so much because of the scientific and philosophical arguments of the authors, but because they have dared to transcend the logic-tight barriers between the disciplines of science, religion and philosophy. They have opened doors for science that few materialistic scientists care to recognize. The stakes are very high in this discussion, as we shall see. For this is nothing less than a discussion of the nature of a human being ... is he or she simply a more evolved type of animal, or different in kind, far more than a complicated evolutionary accident? The answer to this question is critical to the course of civilization. The primary issue is whether this question can be adequately addressed by a strictly materialistic science. Many great scientific minds had their doubts.
Late in his career, Abraham Maslow, the great psychologist and founder of the "third force" movement in psychology, dared to do much the same thing as authors Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary. When Dr. Maslow's book "The Psychology of Science" ventured to critique materialistic science for being too narrow in its focus, the attacks by the scientific establishment were bitter and relentless. Arthur G. Wirth, a prominent member of The John Dewey Society, mused in the Introduction to "The Psychology of Science," a predictive question: "Why would a man hurl his lance against the citadel and risks the rocks and hot oil he may expect in return?" Yet Maslow's complaint was simply that the adherents of the mechanomorphic tradition of the physical sciences were not necessarily wrong, but rather too narrow to serve as a general philosophical platform for science. Dr. Maslow was a well-trained Freudian and behaviorist. He said when he began to study the higher reaches of human nature, his training failed him. He believed that peak experiences were authentic, natural events and worthy of study. What Maslow declared were his "most important findings," the reality of metavalues (the classic triad of truth, beauty and goodness) and their power to influence and perhaps even configure human personalities, especially self-actualizing personalities. These findings were brushed aside by the broader establishment and are in danger of being lost. Yet these issues have never been resolved, and "The Spiritual Brain" helps remind us that more research and discourse are in order.
Many great minds hold that peak experiences and metavalues are not mystic fluff as some would have us believe. Abraham Maslow was a pragmatic scientist and a professed atheist. Much as William James, he believed that values and spiritual experiences should not be the exclusive domain of religionists. He advocated a science of values. He also grasped that the metavalues of truth, beauty and goodness transcend the disciplines of science, theology, and philosophy. Maslow understood that science does not have all the answers. Science can tell us much about material reality, or what is. Science can even suggest possibilities, what could be. But the poet or the religionist offers a vision for us of what ought to be. And science without values builds bigger bombs and more efficient gas chambers. Dr. Maslow fought hard to break down the barriers between the disciplines of science and religion. He wrote:
"I [have] pointed out that both orthodox science and orthodox religion have been institutionalized and frozen into a mutually excluding dichotomy. This separation into Aristotelian a and not-a has been almost perfect ... Every question, every answer, every method, every jurisdiction, every task has been assigned to either one or the other, with practically no overlaps. One consequence is that they are both pathologized, split into sickness, ripped apart into a crippled half-science and a crippled half-religion."
Philosopher Mortimer Adler also lamented the rigid divisions between the three great disciplines that lay claim to truth: science, religion and philosophy. (See his autobiography, "A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror," for the story of his struggle about this issue with crystallized academicians and his pivotal speech: "God and the Professors.") Why is this Aristotelian division between the great disciplines important? Because, though Aristotle's divisions worked well for 20 centuries, the strict paths they followed are running out of ideas in the modern world, and material science is the best example. One of the great founders of quantum mechanics, Werner Heisenberg saw this clearly. In his book, "Beyond the Frontiers," he flatly stated that quantum science had vindicated Plato, who held that concepts like truth, beauty and goodness are realities that transcend the material. Over the years the common wisdom developed that a Platonic notion was unreal, only nebulous froth. However, the legendary quantum scientist and framer of the uncertainty principle, Heisenberg, supports the concept that philosophy's classic values of truth, beauty and goodness, are realities--active agents that transcend the material.
But what of the spiritual experience? The authors of "The Spiritual Brain," Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary point out that Maslow referred to the ultimate human state of consciousness as the Peak Experience. His research revealed that most people, whether they were Actualizers or not, achieved a peak experience state for brief periods. Materialistic neuroscientists claim this is an illusion. Laypersons must decide for themselves. But we are not helpless before the a priori assumptions of scientists, religionists, and philosophers. We have personal experiences that either validate one point of view or the other. Most of us have had peak experiences, and for my part, I am certain they were real. Modern psychologist and noted author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the peak experience Flow, the ultimate state of happiness. Maslow's concept of self-actualization could be likened to achieving flow more often, to living at a higher level of self-forgetfulness, creativity, and service.
Why are these issues so important? Viktor Frankl, another Freudian scientist (and survivor of Nazi death camps) explained the importance of perceiving a human being as more than a malleable "meat puppet" (in the words of the authors of "The Spiritual Brain"). In Frankl's classic, "The Doctor and the Soul" he wrote: "When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, ... we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone. I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment--or, as the Nazis liked to say, "Blood and Soil." I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers."
The authors of "The Spiritual Brain," Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary, are doing a great service with their book. For the layperson, it is a challenging read. Even so, I found it persuasive and fascinating. Ultimately this discussion is about more than scientific data. It is also the interpretation and meaning of this data that must be resolved. The religionist and the philosopher ask different questions than the scientist. We need the insights of all three in rational debate if we are to determine issues of the magnitude presented in "The Spiritual Brain." And, as I stated earlier, the stakes are high.
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59 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Neurobashing, November 13, 2007
I believe this review to be a full, thorough, and detailed refutation of The Spiritual Brain:
Let me start with the evidence, so none may claim that I argue solely on anti-spiritualist grounds. To be sure, the so-called "evidence" leaves one wanting. In fact, I'm entirely confident in declaring that there is no real evidence at all, and absolutely no new ideas presented in The Spiritual Brain. The Spiritual Brain could have been condensed considerably, but is bulked with quotations from, and attempted refutations of, real scientists, apparently aimed at instilling sufficient doubt in the reader before the absence of evidence is laid bare. Please, if I've missed any of the "evidence" hidden somewhere among the anti-materialist pejoratives , by all means let me know:
1) Mystical Experiences Exist and Have Changed Lives.
Author Mario Beauregard ran a study on Carmelite nuns, who "live a life of silent prayer". These nuns report that they enter a "mystical state" that they find difficult to describe.
"Several nuns mentioned that during the mystical condition, they felt the presence of God, his unconditional and infinite love, and plentitude and peace. They also felt a surrendering to God."(p. 274)
This hardly flies in the face of conventional science, and is precisely what any scientist might expect of a Christian sect of meditators attempting communion with God. Meditators of another religion would surely interpret their experience in their own spiritual frame-work. The authors mention Buddhist meditators, but fail to give an account of their interpretation of the Religious Experience: "The scope of the present book does not permit a wide-ranging assessment of all types of contemplative states, so we will consider only the study of the Franciscan nuns." Perhaps it is convenient that the nuns' religious framework apparently matches that of the authors'.
In fact, neuroscientists don't shy away from the study of mystical experiences, nor would most deny that these experiences do have the ability to change lives. But these experiments provide no evidence for the existence of the soul or an outer "spiritual reality". It only indicates that there is an altered state of consciousness perceived as a spiritual reality. Even Beauregard's own research admits that the mystical experience is directly correlated with an altered state of mind (p.272). Because the Franciscan nuns interpret this as a communion with God doesn't mean that we should accept this uncritically.
There is a certain disorder that sometimes arises in stroke victims, in which they are capable of recognizing faces, but feel that the person has been replaced with an imposter. Would Beauregard have us believe that this is because exact human replica imposters delight in annoying perceptive stroke victims, or would he see the unique conditions of the brain as having manufactured this perception? The former would be just as scientifically valid as his assertion that spiritual experiences are provoked by a spiritual world.
The authors, to their credit, actually do admit that there is no proof of a spirit world to be gleaned from the mystical experience: "Do our findings prove that mystics contact a power outside themselves? No, because there is no way to prove or disprove that from one side only." (p.276) While refreshing to the skeptic, general readers may find this quote a bit astonishing, and quite contradictory to the rest of the text. Allow me to repeat: The AUTHORS ADMIT THAT THERE IS NO PROOF OF A SPIRIT WORLD TO BE GLEANED FROM THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE. Research of the mystical experience as experienced by the Carmelite nuns was the only original data provided in this book, and it admittedly proves nothing. The authors often fall back on the Science-Can't-Disprove-It argument, which is the weakest form of argument.
Beauregard can't disprove that spiritual experiences aren't caused by... ME... if I were to claim that I will them to happen. Nobody can disprove that there is a speck of dust on Mars shaped exactly like my head with "Skeptic" written across its brow. In short, there are an infinite number of theories that can't be disproved. It is the job of a real scientist to offer proof, and the duty of those committed to truth to demand it.
The authors claim that science provides no explanation as to what causes a mystical experience, and assert that the experience is perceived because something very real is causing it from a spiritual realm. Curiously absent from this book is a recent study involving the inducement of mystical experiences by means a psychoactive drug, psilocybin (the active component in "magic" mushrooms). The psilocybin study, performed at Johns Hopkins University under neuroscientist Roland Griffiths, showed that participants generally had mystical experiences that seem indistinguishable from those described in The Spiritual Brain - experiences that many participants deemed "among the most important" of their lives. It may disappoint some readers to know that these participants were of no particular religious background, thus proving that if God is still somehow responsible for providing the experience, He apparently shows no preference for one religion over another, or for religious people in general. Any heathen can chew a mushroom. If mystical experiences induced by drugs (of which there is over 50 years of research on the topic) are somehow to be distinguished from mystical experiences on a neurological level as separate from those induced "naturally" by prayer or contemplation, Beauregard has to justify this distinction.
2) Placebo Effect.
For reasons unclear, the book references the well-known placebo effect as some type of evidence for the soul. As is typical of the book, the authors choose to rebut science rather than present a cogent justification for their faith-based propositions: "...materialist accounts of placebo effect are often incoherent. For example, it may be described as the way in which 'the brain manipulates itself'. As we have seen, the placebo effect is actually triggered by the patient's mental state." (p. 148) The book goes on to offer the authors' hope that stem cell research will prove fruitless:
"A clear understanding of the placebo effect could... obviate some current controversies. For example, the ethical issues surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells in treating Parkinson's disease might be easier resolved if placebo effect accounts for most of their assumed value." (p. 149) Really? When researchers at Harvard recently cured monkeys of extreme Parkinson's by means of intracranial stem cell injection, were the monkeys responding to their expectations when they regained functions? Were they cured by placebo?
To me, this cruel hope, expressed by the authors, that stem cell research won't cure neuro-degenerative disorders, is deranged, inhuman, and utterly deplorable. But, of course, I see stem cells as stem cells - amorphous, devoid thought or nervous system. Cells. The authors probably believe that stem cells contain souls, even though plenty of philosophical problems arise from this view (for instance, does the soul split in two when an embryo divides and becomes twins?) So precious is the idea of the soul, that Beauregard and O'Leary would rather see afflicted living humans suffer rather than have to consider a reality-based framework.
The overall message in this bizarre placebo digression seems to be, "faith matters". Placebo effect has been studied at great length in more than a few coherent articles. If the authors are implying that placebo is somehow of spiritual origin, it may pain them to note that atheists benefit from placebo no less than any other group.
3) Near Death Experiences.
In citing Near Death and Out-of-Body Experiences as evidence for the soul, the authors incredibly fail (again!) to make mention of certain experiments that seem to contradict their conclusions. One such experiment involved subjects whose brains were electrically stimulated in a particular region. These subjects experienced full blown Out-of-Body perception (OBE). On her blog, author O'Leary acknowledges this phenomena only after having received several letters bringing this to her attention. The real question is: How did this data fail to make it into the book? Could the authors have been uninformed enough to have missed it? Were they not perceptive enough to see the relevance? Did they ignore it because they did not like the implications? If Out-of-Body experiences can be electrically induced, where does this leave the idea that such experiences are caused by supernatural spiritual forces? Beauregard dismisses the electrically stimulated OBE as separate from a mystical OBE with circular logic: They're not real OBEs because they are electrically stimulated. Also: "With electrical stimulation, experiencers continue to perceive the environment from the visual perspective of the physical body; In spontaneous OBEs: the disembodied center of consciousness may move about independent of the physical body." As any neuroscientist would expect, there is no one part of the brain that can be labeled "Out-of-Body-Experience". Researchers inducing OBEs have only stimulated a region of the right temporal brain. Obviously, this controls some aspect of kinesthetic OBE. To suggest that this tells us nothing about naturally occurring OBEs is rather unbelievable. Suddenly, we now have a mere perception of OBE, which is to be distinguished from a "real" spiritual OBE. Sounds like Beauregard's really reaching. O'Leary is happy to report that induced OBEs in no way disprove the existence of the soul. Of course.
The Spiritual Brain makes much of Near Death Experiences (NDEs), and seem to feel satisfied that these provide proof of the existence of the soul. Here again they are dishonest about the research. Omitted is any mention of NDEs induced by Ketamine, or by use of g-force simulators, in subjects who are not in fact dead, or in serious risk of dying. Instead, the unscientific supporting "evidence" is anecdotal.
The Problem With "Spiritual" Science:
The trouble starts even before the Table of Contents, on the inside flap of the front cover. The first sentence of the synopsis asks, "Do religious experiences come from God, or are they merely the random firing of neurons in the brain?" Of course, the question is absurd. Nobody with even the most basic knowledge of neuroscience would claim that neurons fire entirely wild and at random. Nor does patterned neural activity imply anything supernatural. This is reminiscient of the equally misguided Creationist question: Was life designed, or did it all just happen to come together by Random Chance?
The book begins, not with any overview of its evidence of experimental protocol, but with an attack on what the authors refer to as "materialist science". According to the authors, an unwillingness to accept causes outside the physical world has crippled progress in the field of neuroscience. Good enough. One may be able to accept this argument if the authors then were to describe how science may look beyond the material world, and how it might benefit from accepting supernatural causes. What new experiments would naturally follow? How would this deepen our understanding of brain function, and how might it help us cure neurological dysfunctions in the future? The authors explain, "Nonmaterialist science is not compelled to reject, deny, explain away, or treat as problems all evidence that defies materialism." Good science, in fact, never rejects or denies evidence, and the authors never supply a case in which this has been done. By "explain away", I'm guessing that the authors object specifically to explanations that describe perceptual phenomena in non-spiritual terms. But these non-spiritual explanations also require evidential support and experimental confirmation before being considered factual, and scientists are striving toward this constantly.
The book makes the claim that "...materialism is stalled. It neither has any useful hypotheses for the human mind or spiritual experiences nor comes close to developing any." This claim is entirely false. Science has not at all shunned experiments toward an understanding of "psi effect" or spiritual experiences. Many good, rigourous scientific studies have explored these very phenomena. Oddly, The Spiritual Brain doesn't refute the data, it simply ignores it. My guess is that the authors have merely disliked the results...
Defining the Soul:
One would expect that a book that claims to give evidence for the existence of the "soul" would at least give the reader the benefit of defining "soul" at the very outset. Some may claim that we all know what is meant by "soul", and that the word needs no defining, but this certainly isn't true of neuroscience. The concept of a soul is at odds with the brain itself. Why - it has been asked - if there is some godly vapour that drives a living being, provides character, morality, and consciousness, would God have equipped us with burdensome, fragile, and expensive (in biological terms) organs such as brains? Where does the brain end and the soul begin? If the brain provides robotic function, and the soul provides "consciousness", what are we to make of cases of extreme character change due to neurological dysfuction or brain disorder - like the case of Phineas Gage?
Gage, for those unaware, was a railroad worker in the late 19th century who - in an explosive accident - survived a metal rod being driven up into his eye-socket, through the front of his brain, and out the other side of his skull again. Having been generally admired as a polite, hard-working, amiable fellow, friends of Gage were confounded to note that, following the accident, Gage's character took a turn for the worse. He became slovenly and vulgar, his actions irrational and rowdy. How did this brain injury so affect Gage's "soul", if the soul is the root of our consciousness? The Spiritual Brain offers no clue. Perhaps Beauregard and O'Leary managed to miss mention of Gage and the many other reported cases just like his? Not likely. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio wrote an entire book (Descartes' Error) linking logical ability to emotional rationality by exploring the case of Gage and similar modern cases. The Spiritual Brain cites Damasio briefly, only to paraphrase his opinion that complex connections similar to those that command language function in the brain may also "create our sense of the self." The book goes on to criticize this position: "But, in that case, are the sense of self and consciousness merely a buzz created by the activities of neurons? Or has materialist neuroscience essentially stalled, unable to progress further in the understanding of human consciousness because of the limitations of the materialist creed?"
"...merely a buzz created by the activities of neurons" is an obscene oversimplification of the intricate interactions of a hundred trillion interconnections. To refer to the deft processes of this magnitude as a "mere buzz" is similar to refering to your computer as a mechanical abacus. It's a cheap rhetorical ploy reducing brain function to its most basic element to imply that "materialist" neuroscience itself is just as basic and unsatisfactory. The authors may well ask, "Is the physical world made of a complex combination of elements, or merely a random collection of atoms?"
Cheap rhetorical ploys, omitted data, lack of evidence, lack of definition. The Spiritual Brain entirely fails as a work of non-fiction. As a work of fiction, I really can't recommend it either. Any way you look at The Spiritual Mind, the book is intellectually indefensible.
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