Maybe not explained. But explored, analyzed, examined from an extraordinarily rich perspective. Here, as in other philosophical work (Elbow Room, 1984, etc.), the Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts Univ. states that he aims to dethrone the ``Cartesian Theater'' of the mind—that central screen with its implied ``Central Meaner'' who attends to the ``contents of consciousness'': the ghost in the machine with all its implied infinite regress and mind/brain dichotomy. Instead, Dennett posits ``multiple drafts'' of the real world, the product of parallel processing of perceptual and cognitive subsystems compiled by independent ``demons'' vying with each other, with now one or another gaining ascendancy—the whole a form of ``pandemonium'' that results in consciousness. In arriving at this model, Dennett reviews the extensive literature of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, neurology, cognitive psychology, speech and language studies, thought experiments, and the philosophical tradition itself. This discourse is well worth the price of admission to Dennett's own theater of the brain: He is a gifted expositor with a marvelous sense of humor, and, typical of philosophers, ever eager to persuade, answer the reader's objectives, and strike down rival theories. Does he succeed? Not completely. One suspects that metaphors based on artificial intelligence, ``virtual'' machines, and computer technology are just this culture's mind-set at this time. Dennett also pays scant attention to the role of emotions (in comparison to Robert Ornstein, see below), nor for that matter to the emerging concept that the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems should be considered in any schema of consciousness. Nevertheless, Dennett's analysis is so often brilliant, so witty, and so informed by contemporary culture as to make pleasurable the reading of what is truly a complex and demanding text.
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1991
ISBN: 0-316-18065-3
Page Count: 514
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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