Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) Review

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Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) ReviewMy impression of this book, which I read two or three months ago, was mediocre...- The first third offers a concise introduction in Bunge's materialist ontology, which definitely is worth reading. For a theoretical physicist like myself (despite my taste for mathematical beauty) formalisations should serve a purpose: namely solve empirical (incl. technological) problems! (Popper always emphasised this point: Definitions, conceptual issues, etc. are not interesting, therefore one ought to concentrate on real problems!) A reader may sometimes get the impression, that Bunge's system is "l'art pour l'art"; one wonders, whether the laborious construction of Bunge's conceptual apparatus is worth the trouble (particularly with the fact in mind, that no other author uses Bunge's terminology), i.e. whether it pays off in terms of scientific fecundity.
- The author sometimes treats other philosophers and thinkers very unfairly: What he critises often is but a caricature or at least a rather distorted, mutilated version of what his "opponents" really wrote. For example his harsh rejection of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology: Admittedly, many more popular books on these subjects indeed are highly speculative just-so-stories and scientifically doubtful (e.g. when the description of some drakes to lurk behind bushes and and leap out in order to sexually assault passing ducks is offered as an explanation of mens' equally sinister dispositions...), but that is certainly not representative (cf. for example, E. Voland: "Soziobiologie" or D. Buss's latest edition of his "Evolutionary Psychology")!
- His habit of insulting almost everybody that has a name in intellectual history I found rather childish and misplaced. His harsh judgements are hardly ever given any substantial arguments for. (E.g. defaming the currently dominant paradigm of biology, the gene-centred view of evolution, as a "pseudoscientific popular myth" in my eyes requires an adequately intensive or extensive argumentation.)
- Bunge's views on quantum theory (and more modern developments in physics) are outright for the most part dated or even wrong. (E.g. the Bell inequalities do not rule out theories with hidden parameters, only local ones.) Where foundational issues of physics (or biology) are concerned, look up the more recent (and deeper) literature: Roger Penrose, Jeffrey Bub, Lawrence Sklar, Hans-Dieter Zeh, Roland Omnès, etc.
- The book is pretty repetitive: Bunge's main thesis that we must not ontologically separate a function from its medium (e.g. the mind (="mental life") as a function of the brain from the brain itself) is repeated over and over and integrated into Bunge's own systemic approach, which is a middleground between a "nothing but..."-reductionism (like physicalism that does not take into account the complexity of the world and its structure, thus risking scientific sterility) and holism (which is either semantically obscure or empirically not true). That part is ok, but not too profound... The conceptual framework of Bunge's materialism is indeed exceedingly helpful to tackle some pressing problems of philosophy of science (which includes for me "philosophy of mind"). However, the main task is still to be done: elaborating a theory of consciousness. Here, the excellent analyses of contemporary thinkers like Daniel Dennett, Sean Searle, Thomas Metzinger or Susan Blackmore are rather to be considered more in detail.
-The analysis of the two mainstream approaches to the 'free will' debate, compatibilism and incompatibilism, is pretty weak. You'd better read the respective entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia (or, of course, the loci classici themselves like Hume's "Enquiry concerning Human Understand" or Schopenhauer's essay "On the Freedom of the Will" ) instead.Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) OverviewThis book discusses two of the oldest and hardest problems in both science and philosophy: What is matter?, and What is mind? A reason for tackling both problems in a single book is that two of the most influential views in modern philosophy are that the universe is mental (idealism), and that the everything real is material (materialism). Most of the thinkers who espouse a materialist view of mind have obsolete ideas about matter, whereas those who claim that science supports idealism have not explained how the universe could have existed before humans emerged. Besides, both groups tend to ignore the other levels of existence-chemical, biological, social, and technological.If such levels and the concomitant emergence processes are ignored, the physicalism/spiritualism dilemma remains unsolved, whereas if they are included, the alleged mysteries are shown to be problems that science is treating successfully.

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