This is a moderately expanded Goodreads review, that may get expanded more economically and posted on my main blog as well. The nature of the header will be clear soon enough in the review.
The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience by Adam Frank
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I interested by the title and the subject matter when I saw it at my library.
Was also apprehensive seeing one of the co-authors. The dust jacket reminded me of what I already had read years ago: Marcelo Gleiser, a second of the three heads of Cerberus on this book, won the 2019 Templeton Prize.
Decided to take it home. First, I researched all three authors. And, if not directly and avowedly so, first and foremost, re this book, all three buy the idea of Gould’s NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria. I do not. Neither do many other scientists who do NOT practice scientism (which is real, but I knew that long before this book) and who are NOT Gnu Atheists.
On Frank, the NOMA seems very true, but, per more critical reviews of other books of his, this is based on a narrow definition of religion. And, of course, if you define "religion" as "old mythology," it's easy to go down the NOMA road. With Gleiser, when a previous book of his is titled “The Dawn of the Mindful Universe,” enough said. Thompson’s “Why I am not a Buddhist” actually looks decent as far as it goes, but he needs to push harder on the reality of both ancient Buddhism and modern New Agey distillates of it being, yes, religions. Shut up, Bob Wright and fanbois.
OK, so decks cleared.
The key is in the first chapter, where the trio lay six principles that cause “The Blind Spot.”
And, even before I got through, a trio of words came to mind. They are: Stereotyping, handwaving and whataboutism.
Before we dive in on each of the six, two other things:
Titling the first section, after a rhetorical question, as “A Guide to the Perplexed” kind of lets the cat out of the bag for those who know the reference. I assume it’s primarily to E.F. Schumacher’s book. (It has “A” and Maimonides has “The”) with its references to things like “smallism.” When he talks about things like the “evolutionist doctrine” (sic) he sounds exactly like our authors. Although the trio don’t mention things like the “great chain of being,” ideas behind it are behind them, too. Above all is the idea that Homo sapiens needs to be “recentered” in the universe.
The idea that someone like Steven Weinberg might be right, and that we’d be better served philosophically dealing with that reality never crosses their lips or fingers.
If that isn’t enough, before we get to the principles, the authorial trio show themselves to have a big old boner for Husserl. He’s discussed, I think, more than all other 20th-century philosophers combined. In other weirdness there, Chalmers gets more mention than Dennett and the alleged “hard problem of consciousness” gets more discussion than any idea of Dennett. So does Galen Strawson’s version of panpsychism. (Citing Whitehead early on might be a clue as to the trio’s angle.)
Why Husserl? Although the word “bracketing” is not used, “epoché” in his sense is used quite liberally. And, in a much more smooth sense than that of the old joke, “and then, god,” the pause of the epoché, or the “step outside” of bracketing, leave that entirely open.
Now, the six items and my thoughts on: Sterotyping, handwaving and whataboutism.
1. Bifurcation of nature. “Color is only an illusion” stereotypes serious modern philosophy of mind discussion about whether qualia exist, and for that matter, the foundation of traditional empiricism (wrong as it may be for various reasons).
2. Reductionism. Not all reductionism is bad, only greedy reductionism, per greedy reductionist Dan Dennett.
3. Objectivism (not the Ayn Rand version). Like reductionism, there are greedy and non-greedy versions of this.
4. Physicalism: See the trio lapping up on the “hard problem of consciousness” above. Note that elsewhere in the book, they’re careful to avoid the claim that, on issues of mind, they’re not epiphenomenalists. What then, are you? Some “tertium quid,” per John Randolph?
5. Reification of mathematical entities. Mathematical Platonism, as the idea is more commonly known, may well be wrong. But, just the fact that it is wrong, if it is, doesn’t push humans back to a pre-Copernican center of the universe. This may not be exactly what they mean by reification of mathematical entities, but I think they’re wrong otherwise.
6. Experience is epiphenomenal. (Here, not using it in the mental dualist version of epiphenomenal, to which I referred above.) Again, total ignorance, or willful kicking, or a bit of both, just as in item 1, of serious modern discussion on philosophy of mind. Thompson is himself a professor of philosophy; his signing off on points 1 and 6 right here guarantees the book is no more than 2 star.
At that point, it’s checking the index time and grokking. While climate change is mentioned on 10 pages, it really doesn’t get that much discussion. The word “ecology’ is not in the index. Nor is Schumacher! (There is no bibliography, as a side note.)
They do talk about the Gaia hypothesis, and both James Lovelock and Lynn Marguils. She? A 9/11 truther (and false flagger). An AIDS denialist, at least on HIV causing it, and that’s of relevance given the authors’ use of COVID to bash that “good old time fundamentalist science.” And, a rejector of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Symbiosis comes off as something she was looking for precisely because she saw it as a rejection of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and then moved on from it when it was incorporated.
While I’m here? Their info about greenhouse gas science’s start is incorrect. An American woman scientist first postulated the idea 50 years before Arrhenius.
Barry Commoner is referenced briefly. Murray Bookchin not at all. No Wendell Berry, etc etc.
Had the book actually had a chapter on modern ecology, with some in-depth discussion on “recentering humans” and how this would actually avert a sixth mass extinction and a climate crisis (the real problem is overly-human centered neoliberal capitalism), I would forgive its philosophical tendentiousness enough for two stars. If it did a lot more than that, I’d give it three.
The real issue isn't "human centering" or lack thereof. It's capitalism, especially modern neoliberal versions. And, that has humans VERY centered, and, that's the whole problem. Various recent popes have issued pleas for economic social justice and called out the worst of capitalism. Protestants? Fundagelicals have done no such thing. Jews? Probably some sort of splittage.
Anyway, with that, the last jig is up. The trio doesn't want to recenter Homo sapiens, they want to recenter Homo religiousus and some form of religiosity, spirituality, and ultimate metaphysical ground.
As is, this is not a whole lot more than a stylized, intellectually-veneered version of holding one’s breath, Templeton style, especially with the presumption in the subtitle that science is ignoring human experience. It isn't, and neither are philosophers. And, at an average rating at the time of my post of 4.10 stars, it’s overrated anyway. But, it's not worth reading through for a crushing review like I gave Sapolsky.
Speaking of Sapolsky, one last look at where the trio is wrong on criticizing philosophers.
I've been thinking recently about how memories come up "from the vasty deep," to use the whole poetic phrase.
Who summons them?
If the trio wants to claim it's some conscious "I," I'm giving them a cyber-kick in the nads right now.
The reality is that no such thing happens. Memories pop to the surface of our individual consciousnesses — I can't say of their own free will, because that implies a free will behind them, and "of their own accord" even seems to imply a willer behind that. Per Dennett's "subselves," while rejecting his multiple drafts, as that implies a draftsman as I see it, an impersonal "sea" casts up memories upon the shore of whatever our consciousness is at the time like so much flotsam and jetsam.
And, with that, I turn to the first six of Susan Blackmore's ten meditative questions.
1. Am I conscious now?
2. What was I conscious of a moment ago?
3. Who is asking the question?
4. Where is this?
5. How does thought arise?
6. There is no time. What is memory?
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