The mind-body problem arises because mental phenomena and the material world seem so different, yet organismic unity exists. Philosophers have pursued the problem without inching closer to agreement. The book jacket of David Ray Griffin's work notes this and proclaims that "a radically new approach is needed." It goes on to mention that such an approach has been developed by Griffin and can be found in this book. He has not, and it can not. The approach is fundamentally a reworking and elaboration of some of Alfred North Whitehead's ideas, as the author readily acknowledges.

David Ray Griffin is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate School. He has written other books in a similar vein, such as The Reenchantment of Science (1988). Griffin does not say for whom he is writing, but this is a book for people who know their way around in the field of philosophy. Although there is not too much jargon, the reader should be alert for potentially misleading words.

Griffin offers a "pan-experiential physicalism" as his solution. (There is a slight air of trendiness to this line of thought and to the whole book.) His method involves: a) specifying the criteria that a satisfactory solution must meet, and b) offering a solution that meets them. By the time the criteria have been spelled out, the list of eligible candidates is small. It is as if Woodrow Wilson were to say that, while it is debatable what sort of person makes an ideal President of the United States, he clearly should be someone born in Stauton, Virginia, with a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, who had practiced law in Atlanta, Georgia, and had served as Governor of New Jersey.

The work is amply footnoted and has a good bibliography. It avoids any sort of ad hominem attacks on the author's intellectual opponents and generally has all the appurtenances of scholarship. Griffin's world-view entails, though he does not put it this way, a denial of the qualitative. He says, for example, that the difference between human and animal psyches is "one of degree, not of kind" (p. 241). Similarly, he seems to see only a quantitative leap from matter to plants and from plants to animals. He takes brief note of Whitehead's "eternal objects" but finds them explainable in terms of what is in them. Indeed, one must regretfully question how well Griffin has understood Whitehead. More than once, he says that the world is made up of atoms, molecules, and the like (e.g., p. 173). Whitehead cited this very concept as an example of "misplaced concreteness," i.e., taking scientific constructs developed for special purposes of investigation and regarding them as the 'real.'

No specific, genus-and-difference definition of experience is given. If it were, one would instantly see a major difficulty, because Griffin "solves" the mind-body problem by stretching the concept of experience so thin as to make it virtually meaningless. He twice suggests, for example, that amoebas have experiences. Experience is unobservable. Thus, the author says that nobody can show that amoebas and the like do not have it. Such roundabout evidence as we have, however, indicates that a nervous system is necessary for experience, and amoebas do not have nervous systems. While it cannot be proved that that they do not have experience, surely the burden of proof rests with anyone who asserts that they do.

No reasonable person could deny Professor Griffin's knowledge of philosophy, his scholarship, and presumed desire to solve a perennial problem, but his treatment does fall short of the ideal. For example, he never mentions Aristotle's 'hylomorphism,' although traditionally it has been one of the basic "solutions" to the mind-body relationship. It strikes this reviewer that hylomorphism achieves the balance between strict monism and absolute dualism that Griffin seems to be looking for. Occasionally, he introduces seemingly arbitrary assumptions, as when he refers to a "principle of continuity," which is his way of saying that qualitative differences are illusory. What principle of continuity? Now and then, he accuses his intellectual opponents of his own besetting sins, such as using "weasel words" and bringing in dubious assumptions. He does not neglect a dismissive reference to book reviewers, either.

Serious students of the mind-body problem should read and ponder this book, because it is thoughtful, well-researched, and somewhat original. They should be aware, however, that Griffin wins his battle basically by setting up criteria that only his own theory can meet and by construing "experience" in a very broad, almost content-less way.

Robert B. Nordberg
Prof. Emeritus of Education
Marquette University
999 East Quarles Place
Fox Point, WI 53217

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