``Strenuous'' is how Nobelist (Physiology or Medicine, 1972) Edelman describes the difficulties readers will encounter as they ply their way through yet another texty analysis of what it means to be a mind. Like Stephen M. Kosslyn and Olivier Koenig (Wet Mind, p. 235) and Israel Rosenfield (reviewed below), he likes to use old words in new ways, to coin complex hyphenated forms, and in other ways to multiply the prolixity level. Indeed, the three volumes complement one another. All speak to the need to ground analyses of mental functions in brain biology; all abhor cognitive-science approaches that look to the computer as the model of how the brain works. Edelman's approach is based on his theory of neuronal group selection (``TNGS''), which says that groups of neurons compete in the course of brain development, with surviving groups subject to a second selection in which specific pathways and synapses are strengthened according to whether they yield good or useful outcomes to the organism. Finally, there are broad, reciprocal interactions across neuronal groups that yield numerous brain ``maps.'' These ideas mark an evolution of Edelman's earlier work in immunity and development, in which Darwinian selection also figured. Indeed, evolution is key to Edelman's thinking. He, like Rosenfield, sees the emergence of a primary consciousness (possessed by birds and mammals?) rooted in the present and a high- order consciousness (and self-consciousness) occurring in humans as the result of the development of language. Edelman's many allusions to pivotal thinkers in philosophy and science enrich the historical context of his discussions. In the end, however, even he admits the daunting nature of the challenge. How to deal with logic, art, creativity, motivation, emotions? How to relate the importance of social interaction in development and throughout life? We can not yet, and perhaps never will, eliminate philosophy or psychology from the discussion.
Pub Date: April 20, 1992
ISBN: 0-465-05245-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1992
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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