Dear TTBOOK,
I listen to at least part of your show each Saturday and
enjoy especially the challenging subjects you tackle and the eminent guests you
talk to.
I would like to share a couple of thoughts, particularly on
listening to your interviews with Daniel Levitin and Michael Gazzaniga.
Mr. Levitin's account of some of the most complex human
experiences, those having to do with music, seemed a bit lightweight. I don’t know if he was going for
concision or brevity or dumbing things down a bit. The brain science he described seemed reductive. But more unsatisfying was his attempt
to account for musical experience, one of the most profound and ineffable
phenomena we know of, in terms of physiology, and more broadly from a purely materialist
perspective. His discussion of
“Superstition” was so superficial that I wasn’t sure what he was talking
about. (Not to mention the thwacks
in “Tell Me Something Good” are from a clavinet, not a guitar.)
Mr. Gazzaniga failed to answer the basic questions posed by
the host and by his book’s title.
This is part of a broader difficulty. The topics each week on TTBOOK are
tantalizing as are the introductions and questions posed by the hosts. The question of what consciousness is,
where it comes from etc., seems to come up a fair bit, but we always seem to
hear the same non-answers. There
is a preponderance of guests on TTBOOK that are really sold on the materialist
fallacy. They sometimes seem like
caricatures of the arrogant scientists of yore, the ones who brought us
phrenology, DDT, the atom bomb, and the promise of food in pill form. I’m very ok with hearing from
materialists, but I hardly ever hear perspectives from people who at least
acknowledge mystery and the problems with materialism, let alone that accept or
describe a spiritual reality.
A vast majority
of our species have explained consciousness as proceeding from a spirit or soul
that animates the body, and departs with death, leaving the body lifeless. This concept has never been
convincingly challenged. Other
concepts of metaphysics vary greatly from culture to culture and from era to
era, but this seems to be almost a universal.
I fear arrogance of any kind. I also fear purely mechanistic explanations of human
individuals or groups. Obviously
the material world is the sphere of science, but I think scientizing such
things as consciousness, free will, and aesthetic experience, without at least
acknowledging limitations is problematic.
Sincerely,
Christian Asplund
Composer
Associate Professor
School of Music
Brigham Young University
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