Anyone interested in modern theories of the mind and consciousness has to reckon with Dennett. This book, dense but...
The dean of consciousness-raising consciousness-explaining returns with another cleareyed exploration of the mind.
“How come there are minds?” asks Dennett (Philosophy and Cognitive Science/Tufts Univ.; Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, 2013, etc.), both beguilingly and with just a hint of a challenge. The human brain is both top-down and bottom-up, the latter reflecting automatic, animal impulses, the former the better angels of our nature. How did that top-down control system grow to dominate, producing what we think of as not just brain, but mind? Therein lies a tangled story with many threads, some of which lead into daunting territory: the thought, for instance, that consciousness is really a species of illusion on the part of the “user.” After a few hundred pages’ tour of an evolutionary theater populated by mirages, “feral neurons,” and words that struggle to reproduce and thrive just as living creatures do, such a possibility comes to seem not so strange after all. Dennett defends the human mind as the chief feature distinguishing our kind from other animals; after all, he notes, we are aware of bacteria, whereas other animals are not, and “even bacteria don’t know that there are bacteria.” Yet that knowledge comes at a formidable cost, and when the author enters into the territory of inversions of reasoning and of reasoning about reasoning, of “the evolution of the evolution of culture” and other seeming circularities, you know that you’re in for a bumpy ride: “There are reasons why trees spread their branches, but they are not in any strong sense the trees’ reasons.” The ride may be bumpy for casual readers, but it’s always interesting, as Dennett calls on the likes of Darwin, Descartes, and Gibson—the last the author of a fruitful theory of “affordances”—to explore how we represent and understand representations.
Anyone interested in modern theories of the mind and consciousness has to reckon with Dennett. This book, dense but accessible, is as good a place as any to start.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-24207-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Non-sensationalist religious food for thought.
A scholarly examination of the theory that Hebrew versions of the Book of Matthew indicate that Jesus, or Yeshua, had beliefs similar to that of the Karaites.
Gordon, a Karaite Jew or Hebrew Scripturalist, lays out the necessary background of Pharisaic Judaism and the basic tenets of Karaite Judaism, and outlines previous scholarship on Shem-Tov’s medieval copy of an ancient Hebrew text of Matthew. He also presents linguistic support for Hebrew as the original language for the Gospel of Matthew, then picks apart minor differences between the Hebrew and Greek in several key verses. These slight differences could lead to major new interpretations of Jesus’s directives, namely that he was upholding Old Testament law and speaking against the “reforms” of the Pharisees, not attempting to replace the laws of Moses. Gordon’s discussion of Jesus’s beliefs touches on one of the earliest issues facing the Christian church–whether or not Mosaic law remains applicable post-Messiah. The author’s neutrality in such a touchy subject area is admirable, although not entirely surprising considering that the outcome of the Christian debate doesn’t directly affect him. Gordon focuses on Jesus as a Jew, not his finding’s implications for the Christian church. While the author’s research stands on its own, his conclusions are open to debate. Those with little background in Judaism and biblical study will likely be overwhelmed, but Gordon’s experience as a lecturer comes through as he attempts to make a difficult topic accessible. Extensive indices, appendices, glossary and bibliography provide guidance through the pages of Hebrew history and Talmud-filled footnotes. However, the author’s study is better suited for groups of Karaite Jews, Messianic Jews and scholars interested in studying who Jesus was as a man.
Non-sensationalist religious food for thought.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-0-976-263-708
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A poor contribution to a serious subject, this may indeed illustrate just how badly Catholic religious life misshapes one’s...
A short and rather smarmy reconsideration of the traditional Catholic doctrines regarding marriage and celibacy, written by ex-priest Kennedy (My Brother Joseph, 1997, etc.).
The universal overthrow of sexual taboos that took place during the latter half of the 20th century, anticipated by Freudian psychology and made possible by the development of chemical contraceptives and penicillin, came as a great surprise to just about everybody. Religious leaders, in particular, were caught with their pants down by this turn of events: Most of them (and especially the Catholics, who were predominantly celibate) had never bothered to devote a great deal of thought to sexuality from a specifically religious perspective—relying instead on appeals to natural law (among Catholics), tribal custom (for Muslims), or purification rites (within Judaism). The sexual revolution pulled the rug out from beneath all of these authorities, however, leaving many of the clergy with no idea where they were now to stand. Kennedy, who left the Catholic priesthood in the late 1960s, displays this disorientation (from which he has apparently never recovered) on every page of his study. Although he is quite specific in his condemnation of the traditional Catholic approach (to contraception, masturbation, divorce, etc.), his rage seems to be fueled by mists: He never bothers to articulate the grounds (either intellectual or religious) upon which his dissent is based, and he seems equally unable to put forward any “positive” approach to the subject—beyond vague talk of “unhealed wounds” and some silly, postmodern analogizing (e.g., Pope John Paul as the Fisher King) that sounds like a Leo Buscaglia script written by Joseph Campbell. “The priest is the wounded mythic figure, the wounded seeker of the Grail . . . whose infection and pain arise from that deep and unattended estrangement in the spiritual institution—the Church from this world, Spirit from Nature, the terrible price of a divided image of personality.”
A poor contribution to a serious subject, this may indeed illustrate just how badly Catholic religious life misshapes one’s understanding of sexual life—although probably not in the way the author intended.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26637-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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