Owen Flanagan’s The Problem of the Soul is an accessible
attempt to articulate and defend a thoroughgoing physicalist view of mind (or,
as he puts it, the “scientific view”) against the still popular Cartesian view
that human beings have a nonphysical mind, free will, and an immutable soul
capable of surviving the death of the body. 
Flanagan realizes that convincing laypersons to relinquish the
comforting Cartesian view will not be easy. 
Though Flanagan concedes the appeal of its optimism about our nature and
future prospects, he argues that “[m]ost of what we traditionally believe about
the nature of persons remains in place even without the unnecessary concepts of
the soul and its accompanying suite” (xiii).  The book, then, seeks to defend physicalism in psychological terms
as well as on epistemic grounds.

Chapter 1 defends the thesis that
human beings are no different from other animals, which are entirely physical; we
are, on Flanagan’s view, “[a] complex and unusual animal, but at the end of the
day, another animal” (3). On Flanagan’s
view, the rapidly developing field of neuroscience has refuted the dualist
belief in immaterial souls. Flanagan
argues that neuroscience has shown that thinking, which Descartes believed
could only be done by a soul, can be explained in terms of the complex
operations of the brain. Thus, he concludes,
that Descartes was wrong in thinking that there is any job that the soul is
needed to explain: “The brain working in concert with the rest of the nervous
system is our res cogitans – our
thinking stuff. We are fully embodied
creatures” (6).

Chapter 2 asks the question whether
a physicalistic view of human beings can be reconciled with theism. Flanagan rejects Stephen Gould’s view that
religion and science occupy “non-overlapping magisterial,” since the former is
concerned with the question of what ought to be whereas the latter is concerned
with the question of what is. As
Flanagan points out, “most of the great world religions see themselves as
providing origin stories” (48) that are factual in character. Flanagan also rejects the view that science
and religion can be reconciled by adjusting religious claims about the mind and
the origin of the world to conform to the scientific evidence. On Flanagan’s view, a reconciliation of
science with religion can’t be achieved without rendering religion largely
unrecognizable as religion; such a watered down conception would look a lot
like a secular humanism.

Chapter 3 argues that scientific
methodology, by itself, commits mind science to rejecting the Cartesian view
that the human mind consists of an immaterial, unextended soul that is capable
of causally interacting with the human body. 
Flanagan points out that scientific methodology, whether
self-consciously or not, assumes the falsity of the Cartesian view. The very point of mind science is to explain
the behavior of the mind in terms of causal antecedents in the brain and
nervous system; and the efforts of mind scientists are – and must be – guided
by the assumption that the mind can be explained in terms of physical causes. This, as Flanagan points out, does not mean
that mind scientists believe they can discover strict causal laws that map
particular brain states in a 1-1 correspondence onto particular mental states
or even that they are even close to providing a complete explanation of mind, but
it does mean that the neurosciences cannot be agnostic about the existence of
souls. As far as neuroscientific
methodology is concerned, “the mind is the
brain” (78; emphasis added).

Chapter 4 rejects the classical idea
that we have free will in favor of a naturalistic account of how to make sense
of voluntary actions. On Flanagan’s
view, once we accept the scientific view that our brains are our minds, there
is no longer any room for the idea that our choices lie outside the causal
nexus. Physical objects act in
accordance with natural causal laws.

Even so, Flanagan believes that
what genuinely matters about the notion of free will can adequately be captured
by the scientific view of minds. For
example, he argues that the scientific view is easily reconciled with the claim
that we are sensitive to reasons if we are prepared to accept the idea that
reasons can function as causes. 
Similarly, he argues that the scientific view can be reconciled with the
idea that we have the capacity to do otherwise in the following sense: even if
our choices are caused, it is still true that we could have done otherwise if
we had chosen to do otherwise. And the
same, Flanagan argues, is true of the other attributes of free will that really
matter to us: self-control, self-expression, individuality, rational
deliberation, rational accountability, unpredictability, and freedom to do
otherwise are all compatible with a scientific view of mind.

Chapter 5 is the first of two
chapters concerned with identifying the nature of the self. In this chapter, Flanagan takes on the
Cartesian view that defines the self as “that part of me that has permanency
and constancy, and that explains what really makes me who I am, what really
makes me, me” (161) and then explains the self in terms of an immaterial
soul. Flanagan rejects the claim that we
can introspectively discern an immutable, indivisible self. Indeed, Flanagan argues that “most people do
not identify and reidentify themselves as exactly the same over time”
(177). On Flanagan’s view, we can discern
no more in our minds than a continually changing stream of mental experience;
there is no I to be discerned
independently of that experience.

Chapter 6 is devoted to providing
Flanagan’s naturalistic account of the self. 
Following Daniel Dennett, Flanagan argues that the self is no more than
an abstract theoretical entity. Selves,
on Flanagan’s view, are created by persons as they abstract from their
experiences in a purely natural and social world. These abstractions focus on patterns that are “predictive of our
personal trajectory and that capture the ways we normally feel, think, and act,
what we know about, and, more importantly, what we care about” (241). The self, then, is a set of propositions
that enable us to explain, predict, and control our interactions with the
world; they are, as Dennett famously puts it, “centers of narrative gravity”
that describe our personalities, values, and history

Chapter 7 attempts to articulate a
conception of objective ethics that is consistent with the scientific view of
human beings that Flanagan defends through the first six chapters of the
book. As Flanagan conceives it, ethics
is “systematic inquiry into the conditions (of the world, of individual
persons, and of groups of persons) that permit humans to flourish” (267). Seeing ethics as hence analogous to ecology
(which inquires into the conditions that permit individual life and ecosystems
to flourish) enables Flanagan to view the ethical project as principally
empirical in character. Ethics “starts
[qua empirical inquiry] from an
understanding of human nature as revealed by evolutionary biology, mind
science, sociology, anthropology, and history” (275) and derives normative
recommendations that prescribe how beings instantiating that nature are most
likely to flourish. Moreover, such
prescriptions, Flanagan points out, are as objectively grounded as those of
medicine.

While Flanagan’s arguments are
detailed, thorough, and remarkably rigorous for a book that is written for a lay
audience, he sometimes seems to think the issues are easier than they are. Consider, for example, what he has to say
about the problem of subjectivity: “Several very intelligent philosophers,
including some good friends, have received tenure for publishing long books on
how subjectivity is possible.… The
problem is surprisingly easy to solve – at least from my armchair. Experiences are unique in having what John
Searle calls ‘first person ontology.’… 
Why is that? Nothing
mysterious. Each individual has her own
and only her own experiences because only she is connected directly to her own
nervous system. End of story”
(223-224).

This, however, misstates the
issue. The worry here is not why it is
that I can’t experience what Flanagan is experiencing at this particular
moment. Obviously, the answer to that
issue, as Flanagan points out, is that I am hooked up to my nervous system and
have no access to the information that is being conveyed by Flanagan’s nervous
system to his brain. Flanagan has the
experiences he does because his mind is hooked up to his body and I have the
experiences I have because my mind is hooked up to his body.

The worry here – and it is the one
that probably more than any other continues to motivate belief in immaterial
souls – concerns how particular collections of atoms give rise to particular
subjects of experience. Why it is, for
example, that the particular collection of atoms and molecules that makes up
the body that is sitting at my desk typing these words gives rise to me, rather than to someone else? As Thomas Nagel beautifully describes the
worry: “There was no such thing as me for ages, but with the formation of a
particular physical organism at a particular place and time, suddenly there is
me, for as long as the organism survives. 
In the objective flow of the cosmos this subjectively (to me!)
stupendous event produces hardly a ripple.  How can the existence of one member of the species have this
remarkable consequence?” To say that I
have the experiences I have because I am connected to my nervous system does
nothing to solve the problem because it doesn’t explain why this nervous system
is mine, rather than someone else’s.

If The Problem of the Soul sometimes overreaches a bit, it is
nonetheless a beautiful, well-written book that deserves to be read by both
friends and foes of the physicalist view of mind that Flanagan defends. It is written with insight, humor, depth,
and a charming humanity that always wins out over Flanagan’s occasional
impatience with those who hold the traditional view. The book will enlighten and delight even those who disagree with
him. I strongly recommend it to
philosophers and laypersons alike.

© 2002 Ken Himma

 Ken Himma, Ph.D., University of
Washington, Seattle.

Categories: Philosophical