The Soul Fallacy

by Julien Musolino

Most Americans believe they possess an immaterial soul that will survive the death of the body. In sharp contrast, the current scientific consensus rejects the traditional soul, although this conclusion is rarely discussed publicly. In this book, a cognitive scientist breaks the taboo and explains why modern science leads to this controversial conclusion. In doing so, the book reveals the truly astonishing scope and power of scientific inquiry, drawing on ideas from biology, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the physical sciences.Much more than chronicling the demise of the traditional soul, the book explores where soul beliefs come from, why they are so widespread culturally and historically, how cognitive science offers a naturalistic alternative to religious conceptions of mind, and how postulating the existence of a soul amounts to making a scientific claim.Although the new scientific view of personhood departs radically from traditional religious conceptions, the author shows that a coherent, meaningful, and sensitive appreciation of what it means to be human remains intact. He argues that we do not lose anything by letting go of our soul beliefs and that we even have something to gain. Throughout, the book takes a passionate stand for science and reason. It also offers a timely rejoinder to recent claims that science supports the existence of the soul and the afterlife.

Genres: Science, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Religion, Atheism, Psychology, Skepticism

290 pages, Paperback

First published January 6, 2015

Reviews

[Book Shark · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Soul Fallacy: What Science Shows We Gain From Letting Go of Our Soul Beliefs by Julien Musolino

"The Soul Fallacy" is a fantastic look at the immortal soul as a scientific hypothesis. Cognitive scientist and professor at Rutgers University, Julien Musolino takes the reader on an enlightening journey of the soul. With mastery of the subject and ease of explanation Musolino dissects this fascinating topic from multiple angles and reaches a sound and satisfactory conclusion. This excellent 287-page book includes the following nine chapters: 1. Lifting the Veil Chapter, 2. The Spirit of the Age, 3.The First Principle, 4. Dualism on Trial, 5. Requiem for the Soul, 6. La Mettrie's Revenge, 7. Descartes's Shadow, 8. The Sum of All Fears, and 9. Imagine.

Positives:
1. A well-written, well-researched book that is a treat to read.
2. An excellent topic: soul as a scientific hypothesis.
3. Musolino has a great command of the topic. His writing style is clear and intelligible. His tone is respectful, his approach is sound and he has conviction behind his words.
4. Book’s format is logical and easy to follow. Each chapter builds from the previous as the author masterly builds his case for the nonexistence of the soul.
5. Makes great use of the current scientific consensus of subject matter experts to build his strong case. I love how the author also doesn’t shy away from debunking the strongest arguments from apologists like D’Souza.
6. The book revolves around four conclusions: a. The soul can be treated as a scientific hypothesis, b. there is no credible evidence supporting the existence of the soul, c. modern science gives us every reason to believe that people do not have souls, and d. we do not lose anything morally by giving up soul beliefs.
7. Provides an excellent tour of history, philosophy and science to show that the soul is a figment of our imagination. “Scientists have abandoned the soul because reason and evidence—the tools of their trade—compelled them to do so.”
8. Does a great job of explaining the traditional notion of the soul. “History teaches us that soul beliefs are timeless, close to universal, and that they have been associated with the phenomena of life, mind, and death. Along the way, we will discover that the soul began its life as a plurality of entities that have undergone important transformations in the course of history to give rise to the kind of soul that most people are familiar with today.”
9. Makes great use of polls to help gage where the belief in souls currently stand and what they believe in. “According to a 2009 Harris poll, 71 percent of Americans believe in the survival of the soul after death. Harris ran a follow up in 2013 and found that a solid majority of Americans, 64 percent, continue to believe in the immortality of the soul.”
10. Differentiates dualism from the materialistic hypothesis. “In sharp contrast, dualism is defined negatively. When dualists tell us that the soul is nonphysical or immaterial, they do not tell us what it is, they tell us what it is not.”
11. Explains ways how scientists evaluate evidence. “In English, the word evidence is often used with different meanings in ordinary parlance and in scientific discourse. All decisive evidence is evidence, but not everything that people call evidence counts as decisive evidence. And if we want to avoid fooling ourselves, decisive evidence is what we need to learn to recognize.”
12. Provides many interesting examples of soul advocates pushing their dualistic beliefs. Examines four families of soul claims: a. introspection, b. near-death experiences, c. appeal to recalcitrant phenomena like free will and consciousness, and d. attempts to argue that modern physics can be interpreted as lending support to the soul hypothesis. Great stuff!
13. The concept of a soul in a nutshell. “There is no scientifically credible evidence for the detachability of body and mind… Worse, the concept of an immaterial soul substance has no useful formulation, if it even has a coherent one, and it is therefore utterly devoid of any explanatory power.”
14. Some statements are resounding. “If the term soul is simply a name that we give to our ignorance, it is no wonder that dualism still hasn't gotten off the ground as an explanatory framework more than two thousand years after it was proposed by philosophers like Plato.” “What they really want to say is that the mind is separate from the body and can operate independently from it. This is what we called the detachability of mind and body. But calling the mind immaterial because it is an abstraction is not the same as showing that it can operate independently from the body. In the end, this last option also leads to an impasse for the dualist because it reduces the mental to the physical.”
15. In defense of materialism. “The materialistic alternative to these soul claims is that our moral sense is the result of biological evolution, and that, like every other human capacity, it has a physical basis in the brain.”
16. The hard problem, consciousness…discussed. “In asserting that consciousness is independent from matter, Dinesh D’Souza, like Will Ferrell in his parody of George W. Bush, is asking us to believe that facts are neither real nor relevant. We may not know how consciousness arises from neural computation, but there is little doubt that consciousness is intimately related to what goes on in the brain.”
17. Exposes the science deniers. “In 1999, these sentiments were expressed in a controversial manifesto that surfaced on the Internet. According to the Wedge Document, issued by the Discovery Institute, the goal of a new generation of cultural warriors in America was to “defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies” and “to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.”
18. The problem of free will.
19. Provides meaning in life through scientific materialism.
20. Debunks the notion that societies need “God” to flourish. “In sum, the claim that strong theistic beliefs lead to healthier societies is not supported by the data.”
21. Well-cited book, and formal bibliography.

Negatives:
1. There is some redundancy. The author does take glee in obliterating D’Souza…oh who am I kidding? I enjoyed that immensely.
2. What took him so long to write this book?

In summary, I loved this book. It’s a treat to read a well-written book that covers a fascinating topic by asking the right questions (philosophy) and by providing the best answers (science) and does so to my satisfaction (logical conclusions). Musolino objectively dismantles the soul hypothesis by making reference to great science, sound reasoning and compelling storytelling. The book is immersed with anecdotes, references to great books and reaches sound conclusions. A hidden gem, a high recommendation!

Further suggestions: “Immortality” by Stephen Cave, “Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain” Michael S. Gazzaniga, “The Myth of Free Will” by Cris Evatt, “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature” by Steven Pinker, “The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths” by Michael Shermer, “Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality” by Laurence Tancredi, “Think” and “The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life” by Jesse Bering, “50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True” by Guy P. Harrison, "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts" by Carol Tavris. For the record, I have reviewed all the aforementioned books.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Soul Fallacy was an excellent and surprisingly comprehensive book about the history of belief in and current scientific examination of the supposed spiritual essence of humans, the soul. The author, Julian Musolino, was a guest on The Thinking Atheist podcast in August 2017 and I found him to be well spoken and subject matter relatable. Musolino is "a Franco-American cognitive scientist who directs the Rutgers Psycholinquistics Laboratory and also holds a dual appointment in the Department of Psychology and the internationally renown Center for Cognitive Science." He knows his stuff.

I found this book to be really well written and easy to read. When it arrived in the mail I was surprised how thick it was. It's not huge (286 pages) but I was wondered how much could be written about the soul. The author leaves no stone unturned, he examines a number of tangential ideas thoroughly. From the soul's beginning as a creation of our pre-scientific ancestors to make sense of biological and psychological phenomena to modern theological views and dismissal by modern science, I found that this journey through the life of the soul never dragged.

The only negative for me was that I wish the author would've spent more time addressing near- death experiences, which believers use to support their belief in a ghostly soul and the afterlife. He does mention them on occasion but never takes a deep dive in to debunking them. It would've been nice to point out how these conditions of the physical brain are explained by science and in the 21st century that humans need to be over resorting to the supernatural to explain anything.

Musolino includes comprehensive notes, a bibliography, and an index, so you can go back and revisit your favorite parts. He pulls the thoughts and ideas of many great minds in to the book; among them are heroes of science such as: Aristotle, Chomsky, Darrow, Darwin, Dawkins, Dennet, Harris, Hitchens, Ingersoll, Pinker, Russell, Sagan, Stenger, and Zuckerman. He also gives plenty of ink to skewering believers such as Chopra, D'Souza, and Warren. This was very satisfying.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. Highly recommended.

[Bruce Mackenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. On the surface, I felt it closely resembled my own views on the subject of the soul. Sadly, I found the author, Julien Musolino, to be pompous and condescending. And repetitive. Not content with stating something once or twice, the author appears to have settled on 5 as a good number.There is far too much of the 'I am a scientist, so what I say is true', and not nearly enough of the science itself or the philosophical underpinnings.

The writing does get somewhat better toward the end of the book, and the final 3 chapters are probably the best written. But I couln't escape the feeling that this was a university professor suddenly finding himself addressing a high school class, without the social skills or training to handle it.

In the end, this book offered me nothing new, and did absolutly nothing to change my current viewpoint. That's sad.

[Frank Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julien Musolino is a Franco-American cognitive scientist who directs the Pscyholinguistics Laboratory at Rutgers University, while holding a dual appointment in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Cognitive Science. He also writes clearly, and accessibly about a topic of great importance in this wonderful book that should be read by both those who have already jettisoned the notion of an immortal, incorporeal soul as well as by those who believe or on the fence about the whole issue. Those who have left the belief in a soul behind should read this in order to understand the significance of the soul theory and become more clear about why it is best renounced. Those who believe -- or are questioning it -- should read this in order to at the very least become clearer in understanding what a blind act of faith it truly is. More importantly, Musolino convincingly shows how -- contrary to the mainstream, unquestioned assumption of how fundamental a belief in a soul is for giving meaning to life -- believing in the soul actually diminishes us as human beings and that without the belief in a soul, we gain so much more than we imagine we will lose.

I will let Musolino describe his project as he here elucidates it in his Preface, making particular note that as he shows in his first chapters, the proposition that we have (or are) souls is a scientific hypothesis and not merely a religious claim, and thus can be investigated scientifically:

"There are four important conclusions that I would like to share with you in this book. The first is that the traditional idea of an immortal soul is as much a scientific hypothesis as it is a metaphysical or religious claim. Consequently, deciding whether we have a soul is an objective endeavor that falls squarely within the scope of scientific inquiry. The second conclusion is that in spite of well-publicized claims to the contrary, there is in fact no credible evidence supporting the existence of the soul. The third conclusion is that modern science gives us every reason to believe that people do not have souls. My final, and perhaps most important conclusion, echoing the words of Charles Darwin, is that there is grandeur in this view of life -- and death -- and that we lose nothing, morally, spiritually, or aesthetically by giving up our soul beliefs. In fact, I will show you that we even have something to gain..."

Musolino looks to history, science, and philosophy to argue his case, and as I said, does so while using accessible language and not assuming any specialized knowledge.

[Justin Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a phenomenal book that I hope many read. Musolino wrote a well researched, and well written book, but could have been far bigger in scope. I highly recommend reading the numerous works cited within this book such as those by; Steven Pinker, Pascal Boyer, Victor Stenger, Phil Zuckerman, Paul Bloom, Joshua Greene, Daniel Dennett, Pat and Paul Churchland, and many more. It is not within this book alone that a believer in a soul or immorality will be convinced, but only with further exploration into the works sourced here.

Of course one may say, well it sounds like the author used the work of others and wrote a book about it. What exactly did he contribute? Well, he does a good bit, in my opinion given the small size of the book. Such as putting forth his opinions as to what is to come of a soulless world, or how does one live without a soul? In opposition to what Rick Warren would tell you, life only becomes more meaningful when the soul hypothesis is dumped.

He could have clearly tripled or quadrupled the length and still not hit upon everything. So I won't hold that against him. But I do believe that he did a good job at collecting the more influential minds and works on the topic discussed, and using them to address a very specific question, or "fallacy".

Musolino considers the soul as a hypothesis. He considers the evidence put forth by the many names mentioned in the book and finds the hypothesis wanting. While also throwing an endless spree of blows towards D’Souza that I very much enjoyed!

[Anthony McKay]

I did not like it

I read it to allow it to challenge my own beliefs. It did not sway me. The author is obviously intelligent and well versed in the subject matter. I would have found his arguments more compelling if he had avoided the numerous statements of conclusion that seemed to declare things "case closed" when in fact I still had reservations. I believe in a courtroom this style is known as leading the witness. There are also many references that sure read to me as argument from authority. A professor ought know better. I am still a firm believer in mind, body, and soul. While I agree with the author that if I am going to make such an assertion then the burden of proof should fall on me. I cannot prove it. An empirical, corporeal demonstration of something metaphysical just isn't going to happen. So what happens to us after we die? I don't know. We will find out soon enough. Stepping back to observe our opposing viewpoints I can take comfort in knowing that I am the only one that will get the opportunity to say "I told you so."

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julien rams a giant nail into the coffin of the belief in an immaterial soul by skimming the evidence provided by neurobiology and psychology and then uses logic and rational thought to tie everything in together. There are many other actual treatises that have destroyed cartesian dualism (most notably existential philosophy) but this book is not merely philosophical but a real scientific refutation of one of the oldest held beliefs that man has. Time for a paradigm shift.

[Ian Wardell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think there is either a 15,000 or 20,000 character limit for reviews. This is only around half of my actual review, so I will just post the latter part of my review here. Interested readers can read my full review here.

5. Dysfunctional brains lead to impaired minds

As I have mentioned, in my experience, those who reject a soul virtually never advance arguments for reductive materialism. Instead, in order to justify their stance that brains create minds, what they almost exclusively do is to appeal to the empirical evidence. This evidence, in turn, almost exclusively revolves around the fact that dysfunctional or damaged brains can have a major impact on our minds. Musolino, in common with other skeptics, likewise mainly relies on the empirical evidence. For example, he says:

If damage to only parts of the brain can make you lose your ability to see, think, or feel, then how can all these abilities remain intact when your whole brain is completely kaput?

Exactly the same sentiment is expressed by many other skeptics of souls. The philosopher Sam Harris, for one, and I respond to him in my blog post, The Mind-Body Correlations. I recommend people read that blog post now if they haven't already (it's fairly short). Here is a relevant question: would Musolino, Harris et al. be equally mystified by the fact that someone’s vision can be more and more impaired as the lenses in their eyeglasses fog up, even though, notwithstanding this, their vision is fully restored when they take their eyeglasses off?

Of course, they might attempt to counter this by saying that eyeglasses and other such examples are incorrect analogies. However, it seems to me, that such analogies are only incorrect if one assumes up-front that brains create minds. Since that is precisely the issue at hand, it follows that saying it's an incorrect analogy would, therefore, simply beg the question (in the sense of the informal fallacy).

Indeed, on the face of it, it seems to me that in this context, the analogy of eyeglasses and vision are of a similar nature to brains and minds. For just as there is no possible mechanism in the lenses in eyeglasses that could create vision, similarly there is no conceivable mechanism within brains that could create consciousness. To elucidate, we have chains of material causes and effects occurring in the brain and these causal chains, like all material causal chains, are exclusively characterised by properties such as mass, charge, momentum, spin, and so forth. But, at the end of such causal chains, we get a sudden abrupt change, a radical disconnect from these measurable processes to subjective experiences such as the greenness of grass, the warmth of love, the smell of roses, and so on. These subjective experiences do not have physical properties, so the usual material causal mechanisms cannot apply to account for their existence. Indeed, to my mind, this possibility that brains create consciousness is, on the face of it, just as outlandish as to suppose our glasses are creating vision.

I feel I may still not yet have adequately conveyed the deeply implausible nature of this hypothesis that brains create consciousness. Let me put it this way. When I was a child, one of my favourite books was The Marvellous Land of Oz. In this book, the main character constructs a man mainly made out of wood, but also with a pumpkin for a head. A magic spell makes this wooden man come alive, that is, become conscious. As young children, I'm sure that most of us would think this is at least plausible, but as adults, most of us would find such an idea absurd. And yet, this is comparable to what we are being asked to accept. For, in a sense, it seems equally magical that brains could create consciousness, since there is no conceivable mechanism.

But let's waive aside the deeply implausible nature of this claim that brains create consciousness. Let's, for the sake of argument, accept that it’s at least possible. That it might well be an unanalysable brute fact about the world that certain physical activity of a certain type of complexity just spontaneously brings conscious experiences into being. Why, though, prefer this possibility to the alternative that selves and their conscious states already exist with brains merely affecting our minds?

Indeed, this alternative is surely vastly more plausible. To illustrate this, consider the following. Let's imagine that I can see a tree in front of me. How is this possible? Well, the tree has to exist, my eyes need to be functioning, and the appropriate regions of my brain need to be functioning correctly. Considering how incredibly complex my brain is, this makes for an intricate causal chain. Yet, for all that, I can stop my vision of the tree, in a sense, delete my vision, by the simple act of closing my eyes. Or, to introduce my eyeglasses example again, my vision of the tree could be compromised, or even blocked if the lenses were fogged up. Conversely, my vision of the tree can be restored by the simple act of opening my eyes again or cleaning the lenses of my eyeglasses. However, opening my eyes or cleaning my lenses obviously play no role in creating my vision. The bottom line is this. The process by which we are able to visually see is a complex, involved one. Contrariwise, very simple acts or procedures can block or restore our vision. But it would be very naive to suppose that these very simple acts and procedures play any role in the actual creation of our vision.

The point is this, generally speaking, the act of creating something tends to be a convoluted and complex one, whereas merely adversely affecting something is, typically, far easier to achieve. Why not, therefore, prefer the far more feasible and relatively unproblematic hypothesis that the self and its conscious states are not created by the brain at all? That the brain, instead, merely changes, modulates, and attenuates this pre-existing self with its conscious states?

Musolino has other things to say regarding the empirical data. He says:

Your memory, your ability to talk, and your personality can be wiped out by brain damage. People who suffer from asomatognosia will assure you that part of their body, say their left arm, does not belong to them. In anosognosia, patients are convinced that a paralyzed limb is perfectly functional. The Capgras delusion is a condition in which patients sincerely believe that their loved ones have been replaced by impostors. Individuals who suffer from Fregoli syndrome hold the delusional belief that they are persecuted by a person who can take the appearance of different people. All these conditions result from damage to different areas of the brain. The allegedly indestructible soul is very fragile indeed. In light of such evidence, how can anyone believe that the mind will continue to function when the entire brain has given up?

What Musolino refers to as the fragility of the mind is simply that it can be changed and altered by the brain, which he believes implies that the mind is created by the brain. As I have already argued above, this in no shape or form follows. We also need to remember here that we’re talking about a mental substance as defining the self or soul (see part 2 of my blog review). In which case, beliefs, memories, and indeed personality, are properties of such a self–they can change without the self or soul literally changing, least of all without the soul being destroyed. To reiterate, the proposal is that the brain is merely able to attenuate, allow or block the expression of such properties (see my The self or soul as a mental substance, where I elaborate upon this idea).

But what, specifically, should we say about delusional beliefs? If the brain doesn't create consciousness, could it still precipitate delusional beliefs such as, for example, Capgras syndrome?

To go back to my eyeglasses. Suppose someone has perfect unaided vision and puts on a pair of eyeglasses where the lenses both contain aberrations of a certain nature. Wearing them, she might think she can read the registration plate of a car 25 metres away. But, in fact, what she thinks are the letters and numerals are incorrect, as she can ascertain by taking the eyeglasses off.

So delusional beliefs are not definitive proof that the brain wholly causes our consciousness. Having said that, if we consider this evidence in isolation, it is surely the more straightforward explanation. However, we also need to take into account that we have no conceivable mechanism whereby brains could create consciousness. Moreover, even if we did, the brain merely affecting consciousness in various ways is undoubtedly a far less convoluted and complex task than actually creating consciousness.

6. Summing Up

How impressive are Musolino's arguments that there is no soul? Of pivotal importance to his arguments is the notion that the soul is a scientific hypothesis. But, as I argue above, in no shape or form can this be maintained. Furthermore, he fails to understand both the dualism he attempts to attack and the reductive materialism he subscribes to but chooses not to defend. His attacks against the former appear to be a more or less copy and paste from other sources, attacks that I think lack any meaningful impact. Worse yet, he clearly fails to understand what is meant by a mental substance and, therefore, what a soul is. So there's a lack of understanding of any of the main terms. Moreover, the few philosophical arguments he advances are naive and shallow.

Having said that, the empirical arguments don't depend on knowing what any of these terms mean; rather, they attempt to show more directly that the mind in every way is implicitly dependent on a functioning brain. However, in the general sense, the fact that X affects Y in no shape or form implies that X creates Y. I gave the example of eyeglasses, but many other examples could be given (see my blog post Brains affecting Minds do not rule out an Afterlife where I provide more examples).

I think Musolino, just like other materialists, simply buys into and echoes the prevailing belief that our ubiquitous technology and control of the world somehow vindicates the idea that the physical sciences must potentially describe the whole of reality, otherwise why would science be so phenomenally successful? I discuss the origin of this pervasive belief in my Science, the Afterlife, and the Intelligentsia. I find it perplexing that people do not understand that such a materialist perspective is not consistent with the existence of consciousness, regardless of whether consciousness is created by the brain or not.

In conclusion, I do not think that this book offers any substantive arguments against the notion of a soul. Indeed, I regard it as being even poorer in this regard than The Myth of an Afterlife (see My Review of that book).

There's a lot I haven't covered in this review. I do, though, cover more of the material in my Kindle Notes.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 1 out of 5]

more third rate philosophy on belief systems

---

Amazone

The Many Fallacies of The Soul Fallacy

Early on in the book, Musolino says he agrees with the following conception of the soul:

"The soul is the traditional idea that there is something incorporeal about us, that the body is spiritualized by a mysterious substance. In this view, the soul is the nonphysical principle that allows us to tell right from wrong, gives us our ability to reason and have feelings, makes us conscious, and gives us free will. Perhaps most important, the soul is the immortal part of ourselves that can survive the death of our physical body and is capable of happiness or suffering in the afterlife. This is the soul that this book is about."

According to Musolino, soul proponents hold that the body is spiritualised by a mysterious substance and he also says this substance both creates and powers our mental lives.

I'll also note that this word “substance” is strewn throughout the book with it frequently being labelled as mysterious. The obvious question here is, what on earth actually is this “substance”?

Unfortunately, he never answers this question.
But, clearly, what Musolino is referring to is what is generally labelled a mental substance.

This, in brief, it is the commonsensical conception of the self.

The idea here is that with every thought, there is a thinker, and as well as experiences in the broadest sense, there is someone that experiences them. So a thinker or experiencer, or more generally the self, is not identical to thoughts and conscious experiences, rather the self is that which *has* those thoughts and experiences. It is what we all instinctively believe. That is until we are educated out of this conception of the self as a consequence of it being difficult..nay..impossible to reconcile with materialism.

Note that this self needn't entail that it survives the death of our bodies, but if it does survive, then we can refer to it as the soul.

Are phrases like “mysterious substance”, and “influx of soul substance”, likely to conjure up this commonsensical conception of the self?

Clearly not. It conjures up the impression that we are talking about something unknown, obscure, and baffling. And, of course, something mysterious.

Quite the converse of what a mental substance actually refers to.

Why do this? Why give a misleading impression?

Why not just provide a definition of a mental substance similar to what I just gave? There seem to be two possibilities here:

a. His principal purpose is to persuade people that there is no soul. If portraying souls as being something unknown, obscure, and baffling furthers that aim, then that is a price worth paying, even though it is misleading.

b. He doesn't understand what a mental substance is and genuinely thinks it depicts something obscure and baffling.

Neither possibility places the author in a favourable light.

.....

As for (a), if it is indeed fairly obvious that souls do not exist, then why resort to underhand methods to persuade people of its non-existence?

Surely it is vastly preferable to precipitate a genuine understanding in people that mental substances or souls are unlikely to exist?

Yet if (b), surely that would make him the wrong person to be writing this book?

There is another major problem with Musolino's conception of mental substance.

This idea that this mysterious substance “gives rise to the mind”, conjures up the idea that the soul and mind are two distinct things, even though the mind is caused by the soul.

Since we are directly acquainted with our own minds, but not souls, this will naturally lend support to the idea that souls are superfluous.

After all, why hypothesize an invisible soul to account for our minds when we have our visible, tangible bodies that can fulfil that role?

But many of those that subscribe to an afterlife hold that minds, mental substances, souls, and indeed selves all refer to one and the same entity. Arguably, we are all immediately acquainted with the fact that we are thinkers and experiencers (mental substances), and the question is simply whether such a self, so characterized, survives death.

There is no additional entity—a “soul”—that is being hypothesized.

In summary, Musolino's conception of the soul is a morass of misleading characterizations, leaving the reader with the impression that souls are wholly mysterious, whilst at the same time leaving the reader in the dark as to what a soul actually is.

The Soul is a Scientific Hypothesis?

Musolino persistently claims throughout the book that the hypothesis of a soul is a scientific one.

He says:
Maintaining that the soul plays an active role in our psychological functioning, that it can operate independently from the body, and then trying to argue that these claims are not scientific is a clear case of doublespeak.

And shortly after he says:
The idea of an immaterial substance that can interact with our body to make us do the things that we do— act morally, feel sad or elated, or jump up and down on Oprah Winfrey's couch Tom Cruise-style is a claim about physics.

A self's conscious states do indeed play a role in our psychological functioning.

What this boils down to is that soul proponents, as well as those interactive dualists that deny an afterlife, reject the idea that the physical world is closed

The phrase that the “physical world is closed”, refers to the idea that all change in the world is purely and exclusively a result of the interactions of the four physical forces existing in nature (namely, gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force).

Believing in a causally potent soul/self contradicts such physical causal closure.

I agree that, at least in principle, this contravening of physical causal closure will be detectable.

However, I suspect that the initial impact on consciousness will likely be minute, perhaps on the quantum scale.

It is only then, via physical chains of causes and effects, that this initial impact cascades into larger and larger effects.

Importantly, since neuroscientists are virtually all materialists, they won't be looking for any such influence, least of all any minute influence.

Furthermore and crucially, our functional MRIs lack the resolution to make any assertions in this regard in any case.

Musolino also states that psychology and biology will be impacted by the existence of a soul.

However, even if we grant that these disciplines are, in principle, reducible to fundamental physics, in practice they have their own laws, laws that are revealed by our empirical investigations of the world.

Hence, if causally efficacious non-material selves or souls exist, their activity in the world will be implicitly incorporated into such laws.

There is a more decisive reason, though, why dualism, and by extension, the existence of a soul, isn't primarily a scientific hypothesis.

To see why we have to go back to the 17th century when modern science was born. At that time, it was taken as a matter of fact that the world is full of colours, sounds, odours, and other qualitative aspects.

This created a problem for a scientific description of the world since such qualitative aspects of the world cannot be measured, and hence cannot be captured by mathematical equations.

For example, neither the red colour of a tomato nor its characteristic taste can be captured by mathematical equations.

It took Galileo's reimagining of the world to take care of this problem.

In this reimagining, material objects, indeed, the whole material world including the brain, don't really possess colours, sounds, odours, and other qualitative aspects. Instead, the material world was defined as merely consisting of the quantifiable or measurable aspects of reality; namely size, shape, location, motion, and nothing else.

Hence, colours, sounds, odours and so on were no longer treated as being part of the material world at all, instead they were relegated to only existing in the mind.

And in fact, at least in science, the words standing for these qualities have been redefined to refer to those aspects of the material world that precipitate the appropriate qualitative experiences in our minds.

For example, colours were redefined to refer to the respective specific wavelengths of light that objects reflect.

The upshot of all this is that it left the material world as being exclusively composed of things and processes that can, in principle, be detected by our measuring instruments, and thus can be measured.

The consequence of this was that the physical sciences could now potentially describe the material world in its *entirety*. That is, no aspect of the material world resides beyond its ambit.

Yet, science also has its limitations since it can only describe that which is measurable, or in other words, that which is material.

This means that our experience of colours, sounds, and odours reside beyond the ambit of science.

I conclude, contra Musolino, that we cannot claim that the soul is a scientific hypothesis.

It is a philosophical one and, more specifically, a metaphysical one.

I perhaps should add here that although a type of dualism is seemingly entailed by virtue of the way that Galileo defined the material world, this in no shape or form entails the existence of a soul that survives the death of our bodies.

All dualism means is that there are two types of things or existents in the world. There is the material world, cashed out by everything we can measure. And there is consciousness, with all its contents.

There is nothing innately contradictory about physical things and processes somehow creating such a non-material consciousness.

.....

Reductive Materialsm

Despite the carving up of reality that Galileo introduced that seemingly entailed a type of dualism, there is a position that explicitly denies any type of dualism, a position called reductive materialism.

This holds that consciousness, if it exists at all, is reducible to material processes.

The argument is that although consciousness might seem very different to any physical thing or process, this doesn't mean that it is.

Musolino, near the end of his book, tries to illustrate this to his readers by presenting us with a picture of what appears to be an assortment of random pixels. However, when viewed from afar, the pixels can be seen to represent a crude picture of Elvis Presley.

n a similar vein to this, or so the argument goes, it might seem strange that our conscious experiences are really nothing but an assemblage of neurons firing, but that is what they are.

Note that, here, we are not saying that the brain somehow causes consciousness, rather, consciousness just are brain processes, but at a different level of analysis.

Yet there is a problem here, and it is this: the analogies appealed to are false, and, it seems to me, transparently so.

For, at least in principle, we can always see how an object, say some elaborate model created by Lego or Meccano, is merely an aggregation and arrangement of its component parts.

More importantly, we wouldn't expect that Lego bricks, no matter how many and elaborately assembled, could somehow constitute an experience.

So, to mention a few examples. Lego bricks, no matter how arranged, could ever as a collective whole somehow constitute the bitter taste of lemons, or of a pain like cramp, or the experiences of blueness, or of any other raw experience.

And it doesn't help if we imagine the Lego bricks are able to move in relation to each other. Nor even if we imagine the bricks to have other properties, say the ability to repulse or attract other bricks.

At the end of the day, they cannot, as a collective whole, constitute anything other than an elaborate physical structure.

The exact same point applies to the ultimate constituents of material reality, namely electrons and quarks. Neither the Lego bricks nor any other physical object or process, can, as a collective whole, constitute raw experiences.

It appears to me, then, that at least reductive materialism is not tenable, as it cannot be squared with the existence of consciousness.

......

How does Musolino respond to this argument? He doesn't.

He says:
"If body and mind are two sides of the same coin, then how can we reduce the latter to the operation of the former? I'll let philosophers worry about this question."

So Musolino doesn't even *attempt* to justify reductive materialism.

To reiterate, reductive materialism's failure to accommodate consciousness in no shape or form implies that brains do not somehow create consciousness.

Nevertheless, its failure is of high significance.

For since the birth of modern science in the 17th century, it was the gradually spreading conviction that the world is wholly material that justified a rejection of a soul in the first place.

......

Dysfunctional Brains Lead to Impaired Minds

As I have mentioned, in my experience, those who reject a soul virtually never advance arguments for reductive materialism.

Instead, in order to justify their stance that brains create minds, what they almost exclusively do is to appeal to the empirical evidence.

This evidence, in turn, almost exclusively revolves around the fact that dysfunctional or damaged brains can have a major impact on our minds.

Musolino, in common with other skeptics, likewise mainly relies on the empirical evidence.

For example, he says:
"If damage to only parts of the brain can make you lose your ability to see, think, or feel, then how can all these abilities remain intact when your whole brain is completely kaput?"

Exactly the same sentiment is expressed by many other skeptics of soul, like philosopher Sam Harris.

Here is a relevant question: would Musolino, Harris et al. be equally mystified by the fact that someone’s vision can be more and more impaired as the lenses in their eyeglasses fog up, even though, notwithstanding this, their vision is fully restored when they take their eyeglasses off?

Of course, they might attempt to counter this by saying that eyeglasses and other such examples are incorrect analogies.

However, it seems to me, that such analogies are only incorrect if one assumes up-front that brains create minds.

Since that is precisely the issue at hand, it follows that saying it's an incorrect analogy would, therefore, simply beg the question.

Indeed, on the face of it, it seems to me that in this context, the analogy of eyeglasses and vision are of a similar nature to brains and minds.

For just as there is no possible mechanism in the lenses in eyeglasses that could create vision, similarly there is no conceivable mechanism within brains that could create consciousness

To elucidate, we have chains of material causes and effects occurring in the brain and these causal chains, like all material causal chains, are exclusively characterised by properties such as mass, charge, momentum, spin, and so forth. But, at the end of such causal chains, we get a sudden abrupt change, a radical disconnect from these measurable processes to subjective experiences such as the greenness of grass, the warmth of love, the smell of roses, and so on.

These subjective experiences do not have physical properties, so the usual material causal mechanisms cannot apply to account for their existence.

Indeed, to my mind, this possibility that brains create consciousness is, on the face of it, just as outlandish as to suppose our glasses are creating vision.

But let's waive aside the deeply implausible nature of this claim that brains create consciousness.

Let's, for the sake of argument, accept that it’s at least possible.

That it might well be an unanalysable brute fact about the world that certain physical activity of a certain type of complexity just spontaneously brings conscious experiences into being.

Why, though, prefer this possibility to the alternative that selves and their conscious states already exist with brains merely affecting our minds?

Indeed, this alternative is surely vastly more plausible.

To illustrate this, consider the following. Let's imagine that I can see a tree in front of me. How is this possible?

Well, the tree has to exist, my eyes need to be functioning, and the appropriate regions of my brain need to be functioning correctly.

Considering how incredibly complex my brain is, this makes for an intricate causal chain.

Yet, for all that, I can stop my vision of the tree, in a sense, delete my vision, by the simple act of closing my eyes.

Or, to introduce my eyeglasses example again, my vision of the tree could be compromised, or even blocked if the lenses were fogged up. Conversely, my vision of the tree can be restored by the simple act of opening my eyes again or cleaning the lenses of my eyeglasses.

However, opening my eyes or cleaning my lenses obviously play no role in creating my vision.

he bottom line is this. The process by which we are able to visually see is a complex, involved one.

Contrariwise, very simple acts or procedures can block or restore our vision. But it would be very naive to suppose that these very simple acts and procedures play any role in the actual creation of our vision.

The point is this, generally speaking, the act of creating something tends to be a convoluted and complex one, whereas merely adversely affecting something is, typically, far easier to achieve.

Why not, therefore, prefer the far more feasible and relatively unproblematic hypothesis that the self and its conscious states are not created by the brain at all? That the brain, instead, merely changes, modulates, and attenuates this pre-existing self with its conscious states?

Summing Up

How impressive are Musolino's arguments that there is no soul? Of pivotal importance to his arguments is the notion that the soul is a scientific hypothesis.

As I argue above, in no shape or form can this be maintained. Furthermore, he fails to understand both the dualism he attempts to attack and the reductive materialism he subscribes to but chooses not to defend.

His attacks against the former appear to be a more or less copy and paste from other sources, attacks that I think lack any meaningful impact.

Worse yet, he clearly fails to understand what is meant by a mental substance and, therefore, what a soul is.

So there's a lack of understanding of any of the main terms. Moreover, the few philosophical arguments he advances are naive and shallow.

Ian

[Karel Baloun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Musolino's lucidly written book reminds readers how deeply soul belief is engrained in society, showing many examples which we maybe missed as fish in water. Many interesting famous quotations and psych experiments together craft a reasonable story of humans and AIs not needing souls to operate.

Debunking can't deeply satisfy, since it doesn't create new knowledge. We may be less misled, but we don't know anything new.

Assigning the burden of proof, or saying the gaps in knowledge don't prove something unusual exists in the gap, these are not constructive, useful positions.

I read it to stay scientifically grounded, and that's fine. But it was in no way inspiring or full of clever ideas or questions that would lead to new concepts or usable ideas. I'd rather see writing energy spent on shining whatever truly scientific light possible on places where gaps in knowledge do exist. Rupert sheldrake for one has aimed at this.

[Heather Pagano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Musolino was willing to get into the nitty gritty of the reasoning behind why it makes sense not to postulate the soul. He didn't back away from difficult explanations, and walked readers step by step through the reasoning process.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good, thorough and easy to read. What it is: a reasoned tour through history and neuroscience explaining why humans believed in a soul and how science proves that it does not. What it is not: an ad-hominum rant against religious people. Although, Mr Musolino is a little hard on Denish D'Sousa.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting to find here in Musolino's work, a definitive case against the "soul hypothesis." What I found instead were gross mischaracterizations (or misunderstandings) of the soul belief tenants and foundations, and numerous lines of fallacious reasoning. Quite a disappointment. So much so, I think his work actually *strengthens* the soul hypothesis in an odd way, given his tendency to attack only the caricatures of the "soul hypothesis" and even then, not well. I suppose it was a worthwhile read to see the arguments against soul existence, but if this is the best a hardcore materialist can muster, then there is much work to be done.

To sum up, I'd like to borrow a paragraph from Ian Wardell's excellent review that pretty much nails the overall feel and presentation of this book:

"How impressive are Musolino's arguments that there is no soul? ... he fails to understand both the dualism he attempts to attack and the reductive materialism he subscribes to but chooses not to defend. His attacks against the former appear to be a more or less copy and paste from other sources, attacks that I think lack any meaningful impact. Worse yet, he clearly fails to understand what is meant by a mental substance and, therefore, what a soul is. So there's a lack of understanding of any of the main terms. Moreover, the few philosophical arguments he advances are naive and shallow."
--Ian Wardell

(See his excellent full review here)

[Roger Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read Musolino's Soul Fallacy three times since I first bought it eight years ago. After that first reading in 2015, I felt a great weight lifted from my mind, because that's where the question of soul had always been. I had given up my belief in a god sixty years ago, but I struggled with the idea of a soul for the next fifty years. Musolino's work removed any sense of doubt I still had. His book, very carefully and thoroughly takes on every argument for the existence of a soul and simply puts them all to rest. If you are like I was, I believe you will find his work helpful.
Since then, I have given a lot of thought to why belief in a soul is so common among humans. At this point, I believe that we confuse our connection with all living things and with the universe as a whole with having a soul connection, even though most humans would agree that animals do not have souls. Nevertheless, we are all connected, and we need to understand that before we destroy our planet because of feelings of superiority, unfounded as they are.

[John Michael Strubhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

The notion that human consciousness resides in a soul that survives the death of the body just needs to go. There's not only lack of any good reason to think it's true, the insistence on holding the notion to be true screws up society to the point of dysfunctionality. Or so the author claims, and he makes a good case. He uses many analogies and - let's face it - analogies have their limits and some of his are downright silly, but setting those aside, Musolino presents ample scientific evidence and philosophical arguments that would make any rational person lean toward the conclusion that the notion of the soul is just fantasy. My bias? I agree. Even if you must hang onto the idea of the soul, this book will provide insight into how a naturalistic worldview encourages us to live lives with meaning, joy, and compassion for others.

[Ign33l · Rating 4 out of 5]

This trans brother is inlove of dinesh whoever. This is a dedication to her/his love to him and a marriage proposal. All of this book is about how they met and learn from each other and how their senseless debate about religion keeps them appart from getting married, adopting a vietnamese child, have a black thic maid, a thin latina babysitter and a blonde russian secretary.
They could have it all in their marriage 3 hoes, 1 slave, but they cant because of the soul concept.

[Craig Kissho · Rating 1 out of 5]

This being a subject I'm interested in, I was really looking forward to the books contents. I then made the mistake of reading the book's long preface, which sounded like it was written for 6 year olds. The first chapter was no better, which I only skimmed through after being appalled by the authors writing style and tone. I kept the book by my bedside for a month, trying to persevere with it but gave up after a few pages of chapter 2.

Although the concept of no-soul (anatta) is very common (particularly in Asia) , the author seems to think its some kind of an earth-shaking discovery which would make him one of the greatest scientists in history. He appeared more anxious about what others think of him, rather than focusing on his ideas. I couldn't stomach his writing, which did not flow and kept being interrupted by superfluous info and quotations from others, many of which were seemingly out of context.

I hope his ideas were good, since I eventually decided not to care.

[Amadeus Hellequin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tools

[Jessica Diasodse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate that these views were expressed, but it felt very reductive towards the other perspectives in the conversation.

[Cube_rick]

My Neurons told me to read this book

[Arjun Raj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soul is unreal - brain wins. Easy

[Dragonlady · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughtfully written and researched, this controversial book demonstrates why our persistent belief in the existence of souls is not only wrong but potentially damaging to society. Drawing extensively on the work of other authors doesn’t mean Musolino is afraid to put froth his own insights gained from a lifetime of careful observation and study. Musolino raises four main points starting with how proving or disproving the existence of souls is an objective endeavor and therefore subject to examination using scientific principle. Secondly, there is no sound credible evidence for the existence of souls, thirdly, science provides ample reasons for disbelieving such claims and fourth, we have nothing to lose and plenty to gain by giving up this persistent if erroneous belief.

While on the surface of things, this topic is one that would cause most readers with strong religious beliefs a great deal of discomfort, Musolino is generally most respectful though there are a few infamous televangelists he enjoys ripping on. Although Musolino has a strong scientific background, he does not talk down to his readers yet lays out his arguments in a logical, easy to follow manner that holds ones interest. Thought provoking and likely unpopular among the religious community, this should be read by anyone with the curiosity and willingness to challenge or confront their beliefs.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of the book--the idea that souls do not exist--is one with which I fully agree.

The author makes good arguments in this book, but there really isn't a lot of new information (e.g. I would have been interested to see some new cases from neuroscience that shed light on this issue) here.

This is a good introduction for anyone unfamiliar with the arguments against the soul from philosophy and neuroscience.

[Abner Huertas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an interesting subject. The author delivers different point of views from religion, philosophy and science.

The point of all is for you, the reader, to make your own desition of believing in the soul, or accepting the fact that people might no have a soul.

The author never attacks people who believe in the soul, even declares that sometimes might be comfortaiting.

Read this book with an open mind, specially if you believe in the soul, and after make you own judgement.

[William Sharpe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice framework to build on for a rational approach to one of the most difficult aspects of religion & spirituality (for me at least).