Although scientists and philosophers don’t pretend to understand the neurological mechanism of human consciousness, they are eager to theorize about it. Donald (Psychology/Queen’s Univ., Toronto) reviews the evidence and explains how he believes the brain converts sensory input into awareness.
He begins by denouncing his opponents. According to the author, a school of evolutionary thinkers called the neo-Darwinians views human nature as fixed in genetic concrete. It follows from this that thinking, behavior, emotions, and language are hard-wired deep in our unconscious. Consciousness facilitates the working out of these mental processes, but it otherwise has little importance. The author disagrees vehemently with these “hardliners.” He proposes instead that the human mind occupies a unique place in nature, not because of its structure but through its ability to absorb culture (i.e., the interaction of many minds): human consciousness, according to this view, is actually a hybrid product of biology and culture. As a result, the key to understanding intellect is not the design of a single brain but the synergy of many brains. Marshalling studies from neuroscience as well as behavioral research on humans and animals, the author portrays consciousness as a revolutionary development central to human evolution, and he goes on to explain how the intellect might adapt to a future of increasingly symbolic technology. Although dense with closely reasoned argument, analysis, and theory, this study rewards careful reading—but it is also a heated polemic, full of sarcasm and dripping with contempt for the neo-Darwinians (whose arguments are made to seem extreme as well as weak).
An intriguing but strongly one-sided account.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-393-04950-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
Categories: PSYCHOLOGY
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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 31, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Categories: PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP
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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. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
Categories: PSYCHOLOGY | SELF-HELP
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