The last decade has seen a flurry of excitement among workers in neurobiology, cognitive science, Artificial Intelligence, analytic philosophy, and evolutionary psychology over the prospects of reaching a scientific understanding of consciousness. Is this effort likely to be successful or not? Your answer most likely depends on your philosophical commitments, something that you probably don’t question or think much about. In this provocative work, psychiatrist Frank Broucek takes a critical look at the taken-for-granted presuppositions underlying the scientific worldview to assess their adequacy for providing a valid framework for the understanding of consciousness. He explores the many problems that face scientific materialism when it comes to understanding our mental life. One such problem is trying to separate what can only be distinguished, such as subject/object, consciousness/world, organism/environment. Broucek takes the reader through an exciting review of some of the recent literature on the brain and consciousness, Darwinian evolutionary theory, and the prospects of conscious machines. Whether you agree with him or not, you will find his excursion into the field of consciousness studies an intellectual tour de force with important spiritual implications.
