Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over The Existence Of The Mind And The Proof That Will Change The Way We Live Our Lives (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
The author of this book has also written The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul. Brain Wars reviews studies around the placebo effect, the effects of neurofeedback on the brain, neuroplasticity (the ability to alter the brain’s structure), the connection between the mind and the body, effects at a distance (psi), near death experiences (NDE) and mystical experiences (ME).Beauregard, like others, is taking to task the materialist worldview that permeates our culture and which gives rise to anomalies in the sense of that term used by Thomas Kuhn. The materialist worldview, based on the ‘old physics’ maintains that the universe and everything within it, consists of material objects consisting, at their base of atoms, and molecules, that interact with each other in the ways described by Isaac Newton in the 17th century. Newtonian physics has been hugely successful and still usefully aids in explaining many observations in daily life as well as sending spacecraft to orbit or to other planets etc. It’s interesting that although this worldview cannot explain effects at a distance, basic to Newton’s thinking was just such an effect i.e. gravity. Of course Newton’s mystical writings far exceeded, in volume, his writings in physics, something that is frequently neglected in histories of science. Early in the 20th century philosophers such as A. N. Whitehead were probing the fallacies of materialist science and offering alternative models. As theoretical physics grappled with the anomalies that increasingly became apparent, quantum physics was developed. This changed the direction of physics, but, for most has had little observable effect on the materialist worldview of our culture. By ‘our culture’ I mean what is loosely called the ‘West’, as in McNeil’s book The Rise of the West or Morris’ Why the West Rules-for Now and so forth. Materialism is so deeply a part of our culture that to appreciate another perspective is as difficult as a fish conceiving of a world without water. Nevertheless, for some time now alternative viewpoints have arisen. It is often pointed out that other cultures both historically and currently, have been evolved without a materialist worldview.Materialism has great difficulty explaining our subjective experiences. How does the ‘meat of the brain’ make possible our appreciation of a magnificent work of art or a sunset or our love of others? The new neuroscience, embedded in a materialist science seeks the answer in a more detailed understanding of the circuitry of the brain. Coming from this perspective, theories of the mind suggest that the mind arises from the ‘epiphenomenon’ of complex neural circuits as if that is an explanation. Trying to explain observations such as effects at a distance or out of body experiences (OBE) or NDE are not possible with a materialist approach. They are, however, within the realm of quantum physics.As Beauregard briefly lays out the elements of what he calls the expanded view reality: it includes the mental, the physical, the subjective and the objective, the first-person perspective, and the third-person perspective; it assumes that mind and consciousness area prerequisite for reality because they allow us to perceive and experience the world; it assumes that mind and the physical world are continuously interacting because they are not really separated; it assumes that the mind and consciousness are not pr oduced by the brain; in this way MEs represent a diret, intuitive apprehension of the undivided wholeness. Given the subtitle (The Scientific Battle over the Existence of the Mind and the Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives), especially the last phrase, I was disappointed that so little of the book dealt with that “proof that will change…” I found the references to be out-dated and had hoped for some more current ones. He doesn’t mention such books as The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles by Lipton or Lazlo’s Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything, or Rolston’s Three Big Bangs: Matter-Energy, Life, Mind or the extensive writings of Ken Wilber all of wish add more substance to his argument. I'm not sure why I continue to read this to almost the end. It did offer some interesting anecdotes and information on the brain but would then spin it to support his proposition that there exists a mind separate from the brain. However, most of his "evidence" doesn't support his conclusion. It seems he began with a conclusions and attempted to shoehorn that evidence to fit the conclusion. There are far better books on the brain with far less of an agenda.
What do You think about Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over The Existence Of The Mind And The Proof That Will Change The Way We Live Our Lives (2012)?
Beauregard has some good data on NDE, but wanders off in other areas with much less justification.
—anna
Some of the incidents really mind blowing or you say too hard to accept.
—xjojoenx
Absolutely terrific book! Really interesting and intriguing.
—Christina
