18 / CHRONICLESnKing, Queen, Knave—Mind, Brain, and Bodynby Thomas Flemingn”Where so’er I turn my viewnAll is strange, yet nothing new;nEndless labour all along,nEndless labour to be wrong. “nStephen R. L. Clark: From Athensnto Jerusalem: The Love of Wisdomnand the Love of God; ClarendonnPress (OUP); Oxford.nOwen J. Flanagan Jr.: The Sciencenof the Mind; Bradford Books/MITnPress; Cambridge, MA; $12.50.nRuth Garrett Millikan: Language,nThought, and Other BiologicalnCategories: New Foundations fornRealism; Bradford Books/MIT Press;nCambridge, MA.nRobert Ornstein and Riehard F.nThompson: The Amazing Brain;nHoughton Mifflin; Boston; $16.95.nJohn Searle: Minds, Brains, andnScience: The 1984 Reith Lectures;nBBC; London, England.nEpicurus had an answer for .everything.nThe universe consisted ofnnothing except atoms and void; thenqualities of matter and of our sensorynexperience—hardness, color, heaviness,netc.—were determined completelynby the size, shape, and mohonnof the atoms. The quahhes of humannlife were largely a question of pleasurenand pain. Right living consisted innmaximizing the one and minimizingnthe other. The best way to do this, henthought, was to withdraw from thenactive life and to contemplate life’snmysteries, as Epicurus did in his garden.nA materialist philosophy was necessarynfor peace of mind, because itneliminated all the supernatural terrorsnof Hell. What common people callednsoul or mind, since it consisted ofnatoms, could not survive the dissolutionnof the body. After death, there wasnThomas Fleming is editor ofnChronicles.n—Samuel Johnsonnnothing, therefore nothing to be afraidnof The philosophic man could facenthe universe with equanimity if henkept in mind the central doctrine ofnmaterialism: that every phenomenonnhad an explanahon, a materialist explanation.nAny given account mightnnot be the right one, but, he insisted,nthere was a right one waiting to bendiscovered.nThe fly in the Epicurean ointmentnwas the problem of the will. Howncould a person choose to live rightly, tonjoin the Master in the Garden, if hisnmental life were determined by theniron laws of physics? Epicurus’ answern(which satisfied none but the Epicureans)nwould have grahfied the heart ofnmany a modern physicist: while thenmotion of atoms was generally “downward”n(as Democritus had said), therenwas an unpredictable swerve in theirndescent. If the atoms of the mindnare unpredictable, this must meannthat they are free. Many moderns,nespecially Christians, have derived ansimilar comfort from Heisenberg’snuncertainty principle in quantum mechanics.nWhile C.S. Lewis warnednagainst pinning our hopes on the ultimatenirrationality of the universe, mostnof us have not been so cautious. Butnhow we get from the subatomic levelnto the level of ordinary existence is anproblem that has seemed to bother fewnpeople.nIt bothers the philosopher JohnnSeade. Near the end of his 1984 ReithnLectures given originally on thenBBC—a book that cannot be praisedntoo highly for its lucidity andnreadability—Searle points out whatnshould have been obvious all along:nIndeterminism at the level ofnparticles in physics is really nonsupport at all to any doctrine ofnthe freedom of the will;nbecause first, the statisticalnnnindeterminacy at the level ofnparticles does not show anynindeterminacy at the level ofnobjects that matter tonus—human bodies, fornexample. And secondly, even ifnthere is an element ofnindeterminacy in the behaviornof physical particles—even ifnthey are only statisticallynpredictable—still, that by itselfngives no scope for humannfreedom of the will; because itndoesn’t follow from the factnthat particles are onlynstatistically determined that thenhuman mind can force thenstatistically determined particlesnto swerve from their paths.nWhat we know of physics, Searle argues,nindicates the impossibility officenwill; however, it is not physics butnbiology that inspires Searle’s philosophynof brain/mind.nSuch a philosophy has been a longntime in coming. In The Science of thenMind, Owen J. Flanagan Jr. does ancreditable job of tracing the rise ofnscientific psychology. His introductorynchapter on Descartes raises (as Descartesndid himself) most of the fundamentalnquestions. Descartes’ basicnanswer—that there is a split betweennmind and body—unfortunately posesnthe serious problem of how an immaterialnmind can influence the physicalnbody. Perhaps the worst eflFect of anradical mind/body dualism was that itnfreed whole centuries of philosophersnfrom the need to consider the brain.nWithout too much exaggeration it cannbe said that the whole history of psychologicalnspeculation—from Locke,nHume, and Kant, all the way down tonFreudians, Behaviorists, and cognitivenpsychologists—has been a flight fromnreality: the reality of the central nervousnsystem.nOne of the oddest features in thisnhistory has been the paradox of philosophersnprating about nature withoutntaking the trouble to examine it.nWhile Flanagan accurately representsnWilliam James as the modern Socratesnwho took psychology down from then