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
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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