Readers up to date with the scholarly controversy surrounding consciousness will find this a useful addition to it.
A densely argued investigation of the origins of consciousness.
In this highly, sometimes overly, detailed narrative, Solms, who teaches at the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town, takes three paths to a theory of consciousness: “the elementary physics of life, the most recent advances in both computational and affective neuroscience and the subtleties of subjective experience that were traditionally explored by psychoanalysis.” These lines of investigation lead him to reject the long-held view that consciousness arises in the cerebral cortex, the locus of intelligence, but instead is to be found in a far more ancient, even primitive part of the brain, deep in the brainstem “that humans share with fishes.” The author’s insight comes from his research into dreams, phenomena that are also shared by other forms of animal life. He examines the mental behavior of hydrocephalic children, who, lacking the cortex, ought in the older theory to lack consciousness but who in fact do not. Solms’ argument, which is often repetitive, can be daunting. In part, this is because of its language, as when he writes, “accurate memory search and monitoring functions turn out to depend in part upon the cholinergic basal forebrain circuits, which constrain the ‘reward’ mechanisms of the mesocortical-mesolimbic dopamine circuit in memory retrieval.” In part, it is because he alternately takes issue with or builds on the work of other scholars of consciousness, such as Antonio Damasio and Bud Craig, familiarity with whose theories is nearly a prerequisite for readers. Still, Solms makes valuable points: He shows that consciousness is “part of nature” and not of “some parallel universe…beyond the reach of science,” and he gives a fruitful account of how memory processing, “cortical consciousness,” automaticity, and other brain functions operate. He concludes, repetitively, that “consciousness is part of nature and it is mathematically tractable.”
Readers up to date with the scholarly controversy surrounding consciousness will find this a useful addition to it.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-393-54201-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
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
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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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