Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 17:1 (Spring 2020)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

JBTM 17:1 (Spring 2020) p. 93

Book Reviews

The Brain, the Mind, and the Person Within: The Enduring Mystery of the Soul. By Mark Cosgrove. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2018. 176 pages. Paperback, $18.99.

Mark Cosgrove is professor and chairman of the psychology department at Taylor University in Upland Indiana. He has authored numerous books with The Brain, the Mind, and the Person Within as his latest. Cosgrove structures this book in 10 separate chapters, each with a similar layout, giving a brief example at the beginning, offering information on the neuroscience and the brain, providing test cases from science, noting “persons of interest” who fit with the chapter theme, and providing two book recommendations.

Chapter 1 introduces the overall work, focusing on the nature of the brain and the person within the brain, which he considers to be a separate entity of sorts though nearly inseparable (12). His key point that governs the overall thesis is found here, saying, “to not view the human brain and experimental data with personhood in view, is a self-imposed poverty of the intellect and greatly limiting in ways that can never help us see the totality of what human beings and their brains are all about.” It is personhood, beyond the matter of the brain, that is always to be kept in view for Cosgrove. No amount of scientific observation about the brain can fully explain the person. To allow science to attempt to answer all the questions about human nature is to pay homage to the false god of scientism (19). As he will say later, and repeat in various forms throughout, “personhood needs to be a guide in neuroscientific theory and research” (69).

Chapter 2 opens by insisting that, “I am myself, and I am, in important ways, also my brain” (25). So, despite the reality that humans are more than their brains, they are never less than their brains. Chapter 3 continues this content trend, explaining aspects of the brain and raising potential problems for reductive physicalist views that see the person as nothing more than matter. For example, if Shakespeare’s brain matter is the same as others, why was he more gifted than others (53)? Or why was Einstein smarter than others?

JBTM 17:1 (Spring 2020) p. 94

Chapter 4 introduces the “hard problem” in neuroscience. Why and how does the physical brain give rise to non-physical subjective feelings (61)? He naturally dismisses any form of physicalism as a sufficient answer and even rejects emergent answers as merely “labeling, not explaining the problem” (64). Only a view that posits an immaterial person can sufficiently explain the reason that humans have subjective thoughts that are non-material. Chapter 5 follows with a similarly hard problem, considering free will. H...