Soul or No Soul?

No, this isn't an idea for a new TV game show, but the central question of neuroscience, as described in the book "The Spiritual Brain - A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul" by Mario Beauregard. Bryan Appleyard review the book and describes the difficulties for both camps in the debate, the materialists and the spiritualists:

Neuroscience is a combat zone. It is here, in the human brain, that the final conflict between materialism and, to invent a word, soulism is being fought. For materialists, the outcome is not in doubt. Our minds, our selves, our awareness are merely the outcome of the electrical activity of the few pounds of hyperconnected matter between our ears. All claims to the contrary are wishful thinking or superstitious remnants.

But the materialists have two problems. Their certainty of victory is, for the moment, a leap of faith. There is no clear scientific consensus on how the brain produces the higher functions we call being human. And, second, the great mystery, the ultimate hard question, remains: How does matter produce mind, how can it? Irrespective of religious belief, immaterialism cannot easily be dismissed. What is the nature of what I am thinking and feeling now? To tell me that it is all a by-product of my brain is to tell me nothing. What I am is at least as real as the chair I am sitting on, and what I am seems to be immaterial.

Hard scientists and militant atheists tend to dismiss this as spilt religion or philosophical hair-splitting, a futile pursuit of an artifact of language. But all serious thinkers understand the problem. Most, however, will fall back on what the philosopher of science Karl Popper called "promissory materialism." We will, one day, find the material answers because, in essence, we must. There simply cannot be anything other than matter.

The problem with the spiritualist's position is that it can't be disproved. It posits a parallel reality, totally invisible to the material realm, but which is the causal agent behind activities in it. Materialist science can never disprove the existence of the spiritual realm, but it can discover material explanations that make spiritual explanations redundant. I'm not sure how a materialist neuroscience could ever pound the last nail in the coffin of soulism, for it seems there will always be a gap between a description of the interactions of physical structures within the brain and the subjective experience of consciousness.

The great strength of his position is the folly of the materialists. Beauregard continually draws attention to the scientifically dubious basis of their leap of faith. They argue that it must be so and then set about proving it. Their triumphalism - driven by big publishing deals - is their greatest weakness.

Why is it folly? Materialism has continually yielded new knowledge about the universe. It is a winning horse. It may be a leap of faith to believe that this horse will continue its winning ways, but the other horse in the race, spiritualism, never wins at all. It never even leaves the starting gate. The spiritualist leap of faith is to hope that the materialist horse will someday break a leg and be pulled from the race, and the spiritualist horse will win by default.

It is not a weakness that materialism has not yet explained everything. It is a strength that it continues to yield new and better explanations of things. Even if it doesn't provide the final, indisputable explanation for consciousness, it will provide ever better explanations of the mind that will benefit people with mental illnesses. I'm one of those who has benefited. Had the study of the mind never progressed beyond spiritualist hand-waving, I wouldn't be benefiting from the development of anti-depressants. Materialism has made the lives of countless millions of people better. So why are so many people against it?