Review - The Really Hard Problem
Meaning in a Material World
by Owen J. Flanagan
MIT Press, 2007
Review by Neil Levy, Ph.D.
Jan 29th 2008
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4053&cn=394
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Most individuals are not, like Flanagan, "uncompromising naturalists," and remain more or less attracted to religious worldviews. I agree that his lack of "scientism" is refreshing, although (and I say this without having read the book: I did hear him lecture some years ago on some of these subjects at our college) I doubt his "cross-cultural dialogue" finds "Chinese science" something distinct from Western Big Science (Steve Fuller) or post-academic science (John Ziman). To say our minds "are constituted by neurobiology" is hardly the same as dealing with difficult questions of consciousness in the philosophy of mind, and here I suspect Flanagan is reductionist if not scientistic.
I think Buddhism can make perfect sense of rebirth (a term preferable to reincarnation, which is more apt for Hindu religious traditions) despite the fact that it denies the notion of a self, as it is not a "self" that experiences rebirth but, roughly, psychological predispositions and dispositions that color our experience with the world: the person reborn is neither wholly the same nor wholly different than the individual who dies. Flanagan's "naturalization" of Buddhism renders this worldview something other than Buddhism, for one cannot make sense, say, of nirvana in naturalistic terms. Of course it's nice to see Flanagan appreciate this or that feature of Buddhism, but let's be clear his engagement leaves a worldview denuded of what Buddhists themselves find "meaningful" in their tradition. So while it is true that Buddhism is "nontheistic," one reason intellectuals and philosophers in the West are often curious about if not attracted to this religion, it is *not* true that it "can be stripped of its supernatural elements without losing anything essential to it." Its supernatural elements are part and parcel of its ethics, moral psychology and meditation practices (indeed, I can't see how naturalism can grant the kinds of states of consciousness one learns about in this tradition).
Flanagan's vision will appeal to a certain sort of intellectual, but the rest of us will see it for what it is: a denial of the truth claims found in religious worldviews.
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