Mark Graves, Mind Brain and the Elusive Soul: Human Systems of Cognitive Science and Religion (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 244 pps., $89.95. ISBN: 978-0-7546-6226-6.
Mark Graves (Ph.D. in computer science/artificial intelligence, University of Michigan; M.A. Graduate Theological Union) attempts to answer what it means to be a human person within this volume. Dr. Graves is well-suited for this task, as he has taught at CTNS-GTU and organizes a cognitive science and religion program there. Moreover, he has more than twenty years of experience in interdisciplinary research, as Graves studied cognitive science at Georgia Tech before earning a doctorate in computer science/artificial intelligence at the University of Michigan. He is currently a Scholar in Residence at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Pointedly, this book, Mind, Brain and the Elusive Soul: Human Systems of Cognitive Science and Religion grew out of Dr. Grave’s M.A. thesis at GTU. Drawing upon the disciplines of cognitive science, computer science, neuroscience, general systems theory, pragmatic philosophy and Christian theology, Dr. Graves reinterprets the traditional doctrine of the soul as form of the body to frame contemporary scientific study of the human soul.
Graves recognizes that previous attempts to integrate science and religion on the topic of the soul have occurred, such as Aquinas’ attempt, and Augustine’s. However, Graves argues that by re-examining the thought of Plato’s student, Aristotle, one can bridge the gap between mind and body that previous attempts have been unable to attain. In so doing, Graves asserts that the soul is a form of the body because viewing it as such will help relate – and integrate – biological, cognitive, and theological perspectives on the human person. Further, viewing it as such explains the self-organization and emergence of biological systems. In arguing his case, Graves clearly illustrates the integrationist perspective of the relation of science and religion (ref. Ian Barbour). Graves takes a systems approach to science, a pragmatic approach to philosophy (with process thought overtones), and an anthropological approach to theology. He argues throughout that scientific explanation and faith are thoroughly compatible, even complimentary and interdependent.
Graves asserts that the mind, properly understood, does not exist in isolation. Moreover, reality, Graves asserts, has multiple logically consistent narratives that in part only describe portions of reality, but in conjunction describe the whole. He explicates this reasoning in his second chapter that is focused on systems theory. Therein he affirms the notion that a schema of isolable units acting in one-way causality has proven insufficient. He advocates, forcefully, that we must think in terms of systems acting in mutuality with one another. Graves’ reasoning regarding systems theory leads to his argument in chapter three that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (i.e. that it is an emergent entity). With this understanding, Graves posits that humanity can be explained by four hierarchical levels: the physical, the biological, the psychological, and the cultural, with each subsequent level dependent upon and emergent from the previous.
Graves further explains and elaborates his understanding of this emergence in chapter four, and argues in chapter five that the spiritual level is emergent from the lower levels of the physical, the biological, the psychological, and the cultural. This spiritual level that Graves recognizes constitutes his understanding of what theology has generally coined as the soul. He notes that his employment of the terminology of ‘human soul’ refers to the constellation of constitutive relationships that enable real possibility in a human person (206). He contends that the soul consists of the dynamic form of the body and serves as a nexus of relationships across all the various levels of human existence previously described by him (i.e. the physical, the biological, the psychological, the cultural, and the spiritual). He concludes that thinking of the soul in this sense provides a foundation for dialogue in cognitive science and religion, as well as explaining how a non-material construct can fully exist in a non-reductive physicalist worldview (219-220). In sum, this book will be appealing to academics and researchers in neuroscience, as well as those who are graduate and postgraduate students involved in the perpetual dialogue of science and religion.
Bradford McCall
Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA.