Re: Science/Scientia Vs. Literary-Philosophic Experientialism ...

Thanks for interesting post. There is a lot of material there. 
Here's Pinker at Reason from the first link you gave. 
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In an interview in the October issue of Reason, psychologist Steven Pinker defends materialism and "debunks" the idea of the human soul as follows: "The doctrine of the ghost in the machine is that people are inhabited by an immaterial soul that is the locus of free will and choice and which can't be reduced to a function of the brain…. [But n]euroscience is showing that all aspects of mental life – every emotion, every thought pattern, every memory – can be tied to the physiological activity or structure of the brain."  
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The question of the materiality of the sould has gone on a long time, in one way, but it is a false dilemma, perhaps, in another. The question is not the material assumption, but the soul question. And the dilemma of matter-spirit has confounded the whole issue. 
I often like to cite the case of the Indian Samkhya, whose treatment is ultra-materialistic, but not in the current sense. There 'soul' is 'material' in question marks. The process of liberation might be to go beyond 'soul', therefore. It is a curiously opposite usage from the Western, influenced by monotheism. 
We may not accept any of that. But the epistemology of science is not better than anyone else's on this issue. It is so much better on most other questions that we fail to notice how it falls out of range here. 
We have lost the insight of someone like Kant. He warns of the dangers of assumptions here. That's the point We can dialectically explore both possibilities, but we cannot presume to knowledge on such a question. 

It might help however to recall the activity of Buddhists. They spend no time, by and large, arguing about soul (actually history shows some different things there), instead they proceed indirectly toward that which would transcend material soul if it exists, and by targetting liberation using only the material manifestation of self, i.e. ordinary consciousness. So that's a win-win. No assumptions about soul are required to start. That's the science trap. It must have a material solution. Therefore soul is not scientific, therefore....   therefore you never begin... Trap. 

It is the dialectic of such questions that is often fruitful. By proceeding in opposite directions you find the pendulum swinging back and forth til the inner meaning of such things is illuminated. But the metaphysics of no-soul isn't much different from that of soul. The Christian version is palpable myth, and also primitive compared to the real tradition here. 

    



John Landon
Website on the eonic effect
http://eonix.8m.com
nemonemini@eonix.8m.com