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THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION

Name: THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION
Author: Steven Sloman
ISBN: 978-0-399-18435-2

WHY WE NEVER THINK ALONE

by Steven Sloman & Philip Fernbach ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2017

Some of the book seems self-evident, some seems to be mere padding, and little of it moves with the sparkling aha...

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A tour of the many honeycombs of the hive mind, courtesy of cognitive scientists Sloman (Brown Univ.) and Fernbach (Univ. of Colorado).

You know more than I do, and you know next to nothing yourself. That’s not just a Socratic proposition, but also a finding of recent generations of neuroscientific researchers, who, as Cognition editor Sloman notes, are given to addressing a large question: “How is thinking possible?” One answer is that much of our thinking relies on the thinking of others—and, increasingly, on machine others. As the authors note, flying a plane is a collaboration among pilots, designers, engineers, flight controllers, and automated systems, the collective mastery or even understanding of all of which is beyond the capacity of all but a very few humans. One thought experiment the authors propose is to produce from your mind everything you can say about how zippers work, a sobering exercise that quickly reveals the superficiality of much of what we carry inside our heads. We think we know, and then we don’t. Therein lies a small key to wisdom, and this leads to a larger purpose, which is that traditional assessments of intelligence and performance are off-point: what matters is what the individual mind contributes to the collectivity. If that sounds vaguely collectivist, so be it. All the same, the authors maintain, “intelligence is no longer a person’s ability to reason and solve problems; it’s how much the person contributes to a group’s reasoning and problem-solving process.” This contribution, they add, may not just lie in creativity, but also in doing the grunt work necessary to move a project along. After all, even with better, more effectively distributed thinking, “ignorance is inevitable.”

Some of the book seems self-evident, some seems to be mere padding, and little of it moves with the sparkling aha intelligence of Daniel Dennett. Still, it’s sturdy enough, with interesting insights, especially for team building.

Pub Date: March 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-18435-2

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY | BUSINESS | LEADERSHIP, MANAGEMENT & COMMUNICATION | GENERAL BUSINESS

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THE CULTURE OF SHAME

by Andrew P. Morrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1996

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A ponderous, touchy-feely examination of shame, its causes, and its role in the psychotherapeutic process. While psychoanalyst Morrison (Harvard Medical School) still holds Freud dear, he diverges sharply with his contention that shame—not sex and guilt—lies at the root of most neuroses. Whether the malaise is depression, mania, or feelings of rage, Morrison believes it's usually shame that's to blame. And behind shame, the cause of it all is those most reprehensible of villains, parents, who fail to respond in ways that give a child a sense of self-worth. Society is also guilty of causing shame—through general attitudes toward poverty, race, aging, etc. According to Morrison, the psychoanalyst's job (though you can also try this at home on your own, he notes) is to unmask shame in all its guises, trace its origins, and then help the patient either discuss the shame or develop alternative sources of self-esteem. Some psychoanalysts, such as Stuart Schneiderman in his Saving Face: The Politics of Shame and Guilt (published last month), argue that shame can actually speed the psychoanalytic process, and Carl Goldberg (see p. 194) believes shame can lead to self- understanding. But Morrison can see no good in it. For although shame is sometimes warranted or ``deserved,'' although it helps to preserve civility and social cohesion, Morrison prefers the high road of blind self-affirmation and cosseting the inner child. But beyond the merely anecdotal (cases drawn from his practice), the author offers nothing approaching scientific proof for any of these assertions. Even his case studies are too brief and superficial to make his point.

Pub Date: April 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-345-37484-3

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996

Categories:

PSYCHOLOGY

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I.D.

HOW TEMPERAMENT AND EXPERIENCE CREATE THE INDIVIDUAL

by Winifred Gallagher ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1996

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An unwieldy assemblage of information on the varied elements- -from genes to neurotransmitters to early life experiences—that are believed to contribute to personality. Science writer Gallagher (The Power of Place, 1993) has assembled but not digested a huge amount of information on the complementary roles of nature and nurture in forming our individual identities. Her book centers on a woman identified as Monica. Monica was studied from her sensually deprived infancy (when an esophageal defect necessitated tube feeding and a depressed mother neglected her) and on into her unpredictably happy, successful adulthood—a success psychologists say is due to an inborn temperamental gift that we might call charisma. Pursuing this and many other studies (but without sourcing them), Gallagher brings out a particularly interesting point: that research has found nature and nurture to be linked in a two-way relationship. For instance, experience can actually change neurotransmitter patterns in the brain; conversely, our inborn temperament can influence what kinds of experiences we have. But Gallagher lacks a strong framework or point of view; she roams all over the psychological map, from memory to the unconscious to the artistic temperament. Too often, she gives an on-the-one-hand/on-the-other summary of the facts that leads to no conclusion other than the fairly useless one often repeated to her by researchers: We still don't know how much our genes and our environment contribute respectively to our selves. Further, she relies heavily on models that measure temperament on a range of axes, such as extroversion and agreeableness. But while Gallagher protests how complex personality is, this theory sounds like a simplistic building-block approach: Mr. X may have a large dose of extroversion, a touch of irritability, etc. Researchers recently announced the identification of a gene they say influences temperament. Only the future will tell us what Gallagher unfortunately can't.