I was going to grad school in philosophy before I read this book--I think--but I was worried about whether or not I would ever get to work on the things that really matter. I'm not worried anymore. Although I am wondering if I'll have to do all the other work Flanagan has done before I get the nerve to publish anything. Cognitive neuroscience, psychology, literature (with minor side interests in sociology and religion)--it's a wonder that I can understand anything the man says. But I found this book to be one of the clearest, most enjoyable things I ever read.

The Problem of the Soul is an amazing synthesis in which ethics meets the scientifically savvy 21st century--it's the book Nietzsche would have written if he had been interested in being understood. No other single text has had such an impact on the way I think, and I am in awe of the man who can build so much of the argument from scratch while getting so much right. Flanagan does indeed have the hands of a surgeon: there's no flinching here, and it's a light touch the whole way through. Whatever pain might be involved in the excision is masked by this surgeon's crooked grin; good humor is a great palliative.

This book is for people who want to enjoy reading something that will challenge how they think. It's an amazing primer for academic philosophy (frightening how much I learned without even realizing it--I can't tell you how much I wish I'd read it before I took all those stupid courses), and it reads like a novel. I can honestly say that I've never before had the experience of having to make myself put down a philosophy text in order to get some work done. It was a beautiful thing.

Written for a general audience, The Problem of the Soul comes across as a late-night conversation with a really exciting person you just met at the local pub or coffeehouse. It's written with style and personality, and you truly feel as if you get to know this guy. Which turns out to be a good thing--he's a really great person.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm all for everything that Flanagan says. Actually, I'm the president of the group responsible for promoting interfaith dialogue on campus at Duke University, and I have something of a vested interest in refuting many of his arguments about matters of faith. I wish I could. I do believe there are some valid responses to most of the things he says, but I also believe that all those responses involve some serious re-evaluations. One thing I'm certain of is that all religious people have an undeniable obligation to read this book (to themselves, to their faiths). I applaud Flanagan for the effort he puts into opening up a genuine dialogue: he shows extreme sensitivity in treating people of faith as fellow creatures worthy of dignity and respect (even as he challenges the very beliefs that are generally thought to provide the foundation for that faith).

Reading this book refreshed my vision and rekindled my passion for philosophy. If I had to recommend just one philosophy book for each and every person to read, this would be it. Do yourself a favor and buy it. For those with slightly more specialized interests, you might want to check out Flanagan's other works. Varieties of Moral Personality and Dreaming Souls have become my new favorites; I'm going after the philosophy of mind stuff next. But none of them beats The Problem of the Soul, so make sure you get that one first.

The author does a gentle job with his attempt at desouling. There is no need to take alarm once the procedure has been performed, because as the book implies, consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon of the underlying physiological processes of the material brain. The word soul is an abstract theoretical entity that modern science is well on the way of proving that it's non-existent.

The year 2002 has seen publication of a wave of books intending to help readers understand the new sciences of the human brain and human nature. Some of these books seem to be steps backward into the 20th century, such as Dr. Pinker's "Blank Slate." A few others really seem to be moving forward into the 21st century, such as "Liars, Lovers, & Heroes." In the good part of this new wave, Dr. Flanagan's "The Problem of the Soul" is certainly one of the best, and one well worth a careful reading. He understands both the philiosphy of psychological science and the philosophy of mind at a perceptive depth rarely achieved in American academia. This thought-provoking book can be recommended to all who want to understand the new directions in 21st century psychology.

This book is easy to review, and a no-brainer for people interested on consicousness studies. It is quite simply the most complete anthology on the philosophy of consciousness out there. Papers from William James, to Dennett, Searle, Block, Naegel, and over 50 others. Qualia, explanatory gaps, zombies, inverted qualia, some scientific papers, one of the best intoductions to the field out there.....700+ pages of consciousness, consciousness, consciousness....this is essential reading, and having for anyopne interested in philosophy of mind, and scientists of mind too...the fastest way to familiarize with the vast literature on the subject. The table of contents is reason enough to buy this book, and I will not bore you with more.

It's a thick book and has lots of stuffs in it. Nearly all of most important philosophical works on consciousness in recent years are brought together in this single volume. Naturally, this is a textbook for graduate-level courses in cognitive science or philosophy of mind. And makes a quite nice source book for those who want to further their studies in artifical intelligence.

I call this a primer because Flanagan structures this work on a chronology from Descartes to E. O. Wilson's sociobiology. This is a fairly comprehensive work. It is a deep, well rounded tome which covers, with a minimal amount of ceremony, 350 years of research into the human mind. A more direct approach to current cognitive studies might be through Edelman, Damasio, et al, but I thoroughly enjoyed Flanagan's intelligent retracements of the likes of James, Freud, Skinner, and Piaget, crossfading into the threshold of the modern cognitive sciences. Flanagan's thesis, antithesis, and synthesis style of evaluating and critiquing his subjects is broadly informative. His terse, pedantic tone lent the air of the university lecture hall to this historical and at the same time contemporary work of philosophy and science. This may seem an unflattering assessment in some contexts, but this is not a literary work; it is a dry, serious attempt on the still somewhat (this book was 1st published in 1984, 17 years ago) mysterious phenomenon of consciousness. It may be somewhat dated today but still offers a credible repertoire of neural case histories and cognitive facts, as well as an excellent historical perusal of some of the best consciousness studies history has to offer. It's a challenging read, but the kind that makes you feel rewarded after having done so.

Owen Flanagan's statement of his approach to consciousness makes more sense than those of the Nagels, Jacksons, and Rosenthals of the world. While I tend to find materialist approaches most convincing, I'm often left wanting with respect to those materialists' understandings of real neuroscience.

What I liked about Flanagan's view is that he doesn't necessarily try to show off any sort of advanced knowledge of neuroscience because he doesn't have it, and realizes it. Instead, he emphasizes a multidisciplinary, practical approach to understanding consciousness.

However, I think he overestimates the importance of psychology -- this is, of course, probably based entirely on my bias as a student of neurobiology and reductionism, which purports someday to reduce psychology to neuroscience. But still, I give him credit for a solid theory that makes intuitive sense.

This is one of the early philosophy books that started to make sense on the issue of consciousness. Comming from a decade where Joe Levine told us there was a gap, Frank Jackson that materialism left something out, McGuinn told us we could not understand it, the Churchlands wanted to get rid of the thing, this book is a great relief. Consciousness, according to Flanagan, is a natural phenomenon, rooted in the brain. IT is real, capable of being defined, it evolved, and tractable scientifically. We need not despair, nor look in wrong and exotic places like quantum mechanics. Psychology, phenomenology, neurobiology and cognitive science will do. This is useful philosophy.

In the first chapter, Flanagan sketches the field of philosophy of consicousness. He defines the different positions (consicousness is mysterious, consciousness does not exist, consciousness does not matter, consciousness is unintelligeble, consciousness is miracolous, etc..) and argues for naturalism and the adequacy of science to take on the job. In chapter 2, he shows why elimination of the concept of consicousness will not do. Surely, the concept is ot clear, but it points to a real phenomenon in need of explanation. In chapter 3, Flanagan talks about consciousness and the brain, how and why it evolved, and tries to make clear that there is nothing strange about the idea that cosnciousness might just be the brain itself.

IN chapter 4, Flanagan discusses qualia. He concentrates on Dennetss position that qualia should be eliminated scince nothing could have the properties philosophers claim qualia has. Flanagan agrees, but rightly notices that quala need not refer to that which philosophers talk about. Qualia are real, and there is something like to be in a phenomenal state. In chapter 5, Flanagan chalenges the inteligibility gap and the knowledge argument. Consicousness is the brain, but understanding the brain will not cause you to experience somebody elses consciousness. The gap is epistemological not ontological.

In chapter 6 Flanagan discusses the new mysterianism, the view that consicousness is a netural explanation, but beyond our cognitive abilities to explain or understand. He points out that most arguments for this position are invalid. The standards set in this view for explanation are unrealistically high, and progress has been done in understanding consciousness, regardless of what mysterians may say. Chapter 7 takes on epiphenomenalism, the view that consicousness serves no function and no casual role. This view in coeherent and should be taken reasonable. Indeed sometimes consiousness seems to be a bystander. But others, it is essential for initiating behaviour, functioning cognitively correctly and develop the self.

Chapter 8 is about phenomenology and how the stram of consicousness, although not quite real, is an accurate description of the first person prespective. Chapter 9 is about the illusion of a cartesian I or ego that rules mental life. As chapter 10 makes clear there is a self that is a center of a narrative, it emerges from the brain, but it does not have cartesian properties. The book concludes with the idea that consicousnes can be explained, that a scientific theory is possible and that cognitive science, psychology and neurscience will succeed.

This is good philosophy indeed. Consicousness is portrayed simply, as a natural phenomentol being understood through science. There are some objections one could make, but in all, considering the philosophical views of consicousness, this one is science friendly and informative. THis is the kind of constructivism that one should expect form philosophers.

This book offers an interesting perspective on the topic of consciousness for someone who understands the basics but does not have a sustained, in-depth knowledge of the various theories. It does a good job of presenting Flanagan's own neurophilosophical theory while offering discussion of the competition.

Flanagan does not answer his dualist critics, such as David Chalmers, at great length. He focuses more on other naturalists.

This book is generally a good overview of the topic, though a great deal of the content of this book is contained in Chapter 8 of Flanagan's work "The Science of the Mind." That was a disappointment, and due to that and the fact that the discussion could have been a bit more in-depth, the book gets 4 stars and not 5. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in modern theories of consciousness.

First of all, this book is very goodt because its different essays are all related to one of the most important subjects that concerns professors, teachers and parents : moral education. All of them are written as a discussion, not in a dogmatic way, what gives the reader a good opportunity to have a critical thinking about them. The essays deal with important known theories, such as Kant's, raising many relevant questions to our life context. Researchers will find in the different essays substantial theoretical foundations.

I really had mixed feelings about Owen Flanagan's book Dreaming Souls. Certainly anyone who expected the operant word to be "Souls" would definitely be disappointed. The focus of the book, as the subtitle "Sleep, Dreams, and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind" suggests, is the evolutionary function of sleep and dreams. In general he seems to feel that sleep and its stages probably has a vital evolutionary purpose, but dreaming is simply an emergent property, or spandrel--a Gouldism--that humans have put to various purposes throughout history and across cultures. I could certainly agree with that possibility.

Although the author has a very intimate and conversational style--indeed he seems a pleasant individual and one feels he is talking right to the reader face to face--at times it becomes a bit too much. For instance there was a tendency to repeat key words to the point that one felt brain washed! I counted the use of "dreams" some 14 times on a single page (p. 53)--and least you feel I'm a little picky, the next page continued the pattern, using "dreams" or "dreaming" another 14 times. While the following page only exhibited 10 repeats, 9 of them were in the first paragraph of 11 lines. This gets a little burdensome. I also felt that Professor Flanagan tended to overuse the technique of rephrasing his statements for emphasis a little too frequently. Usually with the first colorful simile or metaphor I've gotten the picture and enjoy the cleverness. By the second I've definitely gotten the idea, but by the third I've skipped on to the next paragraph!

I was impressed with the author's very broad background in the social sciences. He seemed particularly well read among the philosophers. He was also quite current on some of the newer research on dreaming and the physiology of sleep. For instance, he mentions the possibility that dolphins and some birds may sleep with half the brain--something we might all find useful at times. This would definitely have survival value by virtue of an awareness of the approach of predators. The author's suggestion that it might have arisen among dolphins because the breathing process may be fully under voluntary control and a heavily sleeping dolphin might stop breathing seemed unlikely to me. It would be more so that a fully sleeping dolphin might simply sink and drown!

I found the newer information on REM and NREM sleep interesting. I, like many who have studied the subject in the past, believed that all dreaming occurred during REM. I also didn't realize that there were different types of dreams during REM and NREM. Most particularly the physiological data on the brain site activity during the two phases was a surprise to me. The location of the REM site in the brainstem would have suggested to me that this was the older, more primitive form of sleep, since this area of the brain is considered the older portion of the nervous system. This is apparently not the case, as studies of various animals with different levels of nervous function indicate.

The author's footnotes were very informative. I don't always read end of chapter notes, but one of them caught my eye about mid-point in the book, and I actually went back and read those from the earlier chapters. The bibliography is quite good, with volumes ranging in date from 1910 to 1998. There were a number I added to my own wish list for the future. Journal articles included were from "Philosophical Review," "Journal of Neuroscience," "Science," "Psychological Review," "Brain," "Trends in Neuroscience," "Nature," "Behavioral Brain Research," and so on, mostly from the 1990s. Many of these might be a little more intimidating for the average reader--many may simply be unavailable unless the reader has access to a university library--but for anyone doing a school research paper they might make an additional source for study and follow-up.

For millennia, the dream has been cloaked in mystery. The elusive memory, the intense events, the apparent ability to foretell the future have all been characteristics of dreams. Fortunes gained, kingdoms and religions established or overthrown, even an important chemistry discovery, the benzene ring, is attributed to a dream. The mystery of dreams was thought to have been exposed by Freud, who declared them expressions of repressed emotions. Owen Flanagan has swept away many of the myths surrounding dreams. His aim is to examine dreaming in an evolutionary perspective. Since human consciousness is the product of natural selection, then dreams, as form of deep consciousness, must have an evolutionary role. Flanagan simply dismisses this assumption as false, arguing that dreams are too random an event be an evolutionary adaptive role. Dreams are a mental "accident" of little value.

In building his case, Flanagan opens with a startling proviso. He resurrects Stephen Gould's outmoded analogy applying architectural terms to biological processes. Gould's famous [and fatuous] use of the spandrel - a triangular form resting on the curve of an arch, derives from a 1976 article. Flanagan uses the analogy to declare dreams as "spandrels" but follows two contradictory themes in expressing it. In one, the spandrel is an necessary part of the arch - true if the arch supports anything like an aqueduct or roadway. In the other, the spandrel is not an essential part of an arch - true if you simply build an arch that has no other role. This issue wouldn't be terribly important except that it's the essence of Flanagan's argument and why he makes it.

Flanagan is at some pains to show there's no apparent evolutionary role for dreams. Sleep, of course, is another matter. Flanagan shows how many "rest" functions occur during sleep, with reduced impact on both brain and body allowing restoration. These are clearly "adaptive" traits to help the body survive. What role does dreaming play, then? Flanagan uses Gould's arguments and tactics to rule out dreaming as an adaptation because he can perceive no reason for dreams' occurrence. Flanagan adopts another Gould phrase, "exaptation," a trait that emerges in the past in one role which changes over time to assume another. No "exaptive" role can be discerned for dreams either, according to Flanagan. With "exaptations," you never know what they are until they've proven their worth as adaptations. By Flanagan's reasoning, everything is a Gouldian "spandrel" until you can properly assess its adaptive worth - some time in the next million years or so. Like Gould in his original essay, Flanagan provides no evidence for his claim since there is no means to discern any.

Flanagan's style is impressive in most respects. His descriptions are clear and his thesis forcefully presented. Prose skills, however, don't replace evidence. He provides a perplexing disclaimer on why only his own dreams are offered as data. He stresses that he sought dream evidence from family and friends, but that all denied him permission. With the wealth of published dream examples in the literature, this singular approach borders on the astonishing. Although examples of particular dreams have but little bearing on his thesis, it remains puzzling why he fails to use them to bolster, or challenge for refutation, his own case. A provocative book in many ways, it will be a challenge to scholars in human cognitive studies. Recommended chiefly for the professional, it yet provides an entertaining, if not informative read.

I am an undergraduate psychology student who did my thesis on sleep and dreams. I believe that Owen Flanagan took a great essay and tried to stretch it out into a book. The book does make some good points, but the author seems to restate his basic thesis many times over. Basically, the book is slightly repetitive and drawn-out, but anyone who is studying sleep and dreams will enjoy it, especially if they have read Dennett or Hobson because Flanagan talks about both of those guys.

I wrote my honors thesis on the structure and function of dream sleep. I have read a lot of books about this subject and Flanagan is not on my list of recommended titles for other people interested in dream study (Read J.Allan Hobson if you want to know what's up). Flanagan's book is watered down, repetitive and not origional in thought. He could have condensed it into a nice 10 page essay and maybe then I wouldn't have been so irritated and bored with it.