The Soul Problem

There are no solid arguments supporting God's existence or that of
an afterlife, according to author Owen Flanagan. But that does not imply
that we're doomed to a life absent of meaning. Instead, he believes there
is enough meaning-and thus transcendence-to be found in the scientific
quest for answers.

The Problem Of The Soul: Two Visions Of Mind And How To
Reconcile Them

(
Basic Books, 2002)

Owen Flanagan, Ph.D.

In June 2002, baseball legend Ted Williams died. It would have been
a short-lived news story had Williams' son not whisked the body away to
Phoenix, where it was cryonically frozen at negative 320 degrees, the
ostensible hope being that "Teddy Ballgame" would one day be resurrected
to play again. The episode raises an intriguing question: If Williams'
body were reanimated, would the cranky perfectionist live again? In other
words, is the soul of Ted Williams in deep freeze along with his brain
and body?

If by soul we mean the pattern of memories, habits and dispositions
that constitute personality, and if the freezing process did not destroy
the neural network in Williams' brain where these patterns are stored,
then author and Duke University philosopher Owen Flanagan, Ph.D., would
probably answer yes. But if soul is taken to mean an ethereal entity that
is independent of the body, then Flanagan would offer an emphatic
no.

In The Problem of the Soul, a courageous and daring look into the
heart of what it means to be human, Flanagan builds a bridge between two
irreconcilable views of the mind: the humanistic/theological and the
scientific/naturalistic. The former includes a place within our brains
for a nonphysical being called mind or soul but fails to offer any
tangible evidence that such a being exists. The latter is grounded in
solid facts but fails to show how humans can lead moral and meaningful
lives. Flanagan sets out to reconcile the two views and does so
successfully in this crisply reasoned and beautifully written work. He
asks, "Can we do without the cluster of concepts that are central to the
humanistic image in its present form-the soul and its suite-and still
retain some or most of what these concepts were designed to do?"
Flanagan's answer is that we can indeed.

After years spent reading the pretzel-twisted logic of philosophers
and theologians attempting to prove the unprovable, I want to stand up
and cheer when I read passages such as this one taken from Flanagan's
opening salvo: "There is no point beating around the bush.... There
simply are no good arguments-theological, philosophical, humanistic or
scientific-for beliefs in divine beings, miracles or heavenly
afterlives."

But if this is so, how can we find meaning in a meaningless cosmos?
By broadening the scope of science. Flanagan convincingly demonstrates
that the scientific quest itself to understand our place in the cosmos
and our relation to other beings-including our own species-generates the
awe and reverence previously associated with religion. "There is
benevolence and compassion expressed by a feeling of connection to all
creatures," he writes, "indeed even to the awesome inanimate
cosmos."

This sense of connection arises from a knowledge of our world,
especially of our own nature, and Flanagan spends most of The Problem of
the Soul discussing what it means to be human, how brains create minds,
why free will is not necessarily incompatible with scientific
determinism, how the scientific view of self retains most of the benefits
of the theological view of self (the notable exception being immortality)
and how ethical principles and moral standards can be derived from a
purely naturalistic world-view. The pace does slow a bit as Flanagan
analyzes competing views before delivering his own verdicts. But the
reader is richly rewarded for the effort, when, for example, Flanagan
shows that it is not the answers of science that provide transcendence,
but the quest for those answers: "It is becoming, worthy and noble. It is
the most we can aim for given the kind of creature we are, and happily,
it is enough. If you think this is not so, if you want more, if you wish
that your life had prospects for transcendent meaning... then you are
still in the grip of illusions. Trust me, you can't get more. But what
you can get, if you live well, is enough."

It is enough for Flanagan. And it is enough for me and the roughly
60 percent of practicing scientists who have no belief in God or an
afterlife. But will it ever be enough for the masses? Will the remaining
hundreds of millions of people ever believe that the scientific
world-view is good enough? The realist in me remains pessimistic. But the
idealist in me is encouraged by books that demonstrate the wonderfully
uplifting nature of science, books such as The Problem of the
Soul.

Michael Shermer, Ph.D., is the editor in chief of Skeptic magazine
(www.skeptic.com), a regular columnist for Scientific American and the
author of Borderlands of Science (Oxford, 2001) and In Darwin's Shadow:
The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace (Oxford University Press,
2002).