What do you think?
Rate this book
The Brain and the Meaning of Life
Why is life worth living? What makes actions right or wrong? What is reality and how do we know it? "The Brain and the Meaning of Life" draws on research in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to answer some of the most pressing questions about life's nature and value. Paul Thagard argues that evidence requires the abandonment of many traditional ideas about the soul, free will, and immortality, and shows how brain science matters for fundamental issues about reality, morality, and the meaning of life. The ongoing Brain Revolution reveals how love, work, and play provide good reasons for living.
Defending the superiority of evidence-based reasoning over religious faith and philosophical thought experiments, Thagard argues that minds are brains and that reality is what science can discover. Brains come to know reality through a combination of perception and reasoning. Just as important, our brains evaluate aspects of reality through emotions that can produce both good and bad decisions. Our cognitive and emotional abilities allow us to understand reality, decide effectively, act morally, and pursue the vital needs of love, work, and play. Wisdom consists of knowing what matters, why it matters, and how to achieve it.
"The Brain and the Meaning of Life" shows how brain science helps to answer questions about the nature of mind and reality, while alleviating anxiety about the difficulty of life in a vast universe. The book integrates decades of multidisciplinary research, but its clear explanations and humor make it accessible to the general reader.
296 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
22 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 14, 2020
I had high hopes for this book based on my knowledge of the author and the topic. Hopes that were only partly satisfied.
On the plus side, this is one of the few books tying together the modern cognitive science revolution (inc cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence) with philosophy, and more specifically naturalism.
As such, it provides another counterweight (along with Pinker's Enlightenment Now and a few other books) to anti-scientific direction of much (post) modern philosophy and the typical complaints about the meaninglessness of life in the age of science and the enlightenment, without belief in god or religion (the recent survey book on Neuroexistialism is also valuable in this respect).
The first chapters of the book provide a reasonable argument for adopting a naturalist philosophy enhanced with modern neuroscience/cognitive science, which can be summarised as: Nature is all there is. And science and its methods are the best way to gain knowledge about physical reality and the mind (See also WV Quine's philosophy as summarised e.g in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). There's also a nice diagram of the author's suggested synthesis of modern research on emotions and thinking, which integrates the ideas of emotions as signals of decision values and emotions as signals of physiological states. Thagard's theory of emotions seems like a further development and strengthening of the Somatic Marker Hypothesis of Anthony Damasio (e.g in Descartes' Error).
However, Thagard oversimplifies some key topics either because he thinks that would make things more understandable to non-experts or because he's not an expert in some of the key topics. Thagard is primarily a philosopher, hence may lack the level of knowledge and expertise in neuroscience and psychology of cognitive scientists coming from neurobiology/psychology side. I suspect as a philosopher he also has a bias towards normative prescriptions for e.g decision making that may not properly reflect the cognitive limitations/constraints on the human mind.
His treatment of decision science and the psychology of choice provides a heavily distorted caricature rather than a good synthesis. He misrepresents expected utility theory and microeconomics/microeconometrics in a few short paragraphs, showing very little actual knowledge of the use of (expected) utility theory to generate applied econometric models for example. His model of choice as inference to the best decision is similar to a neuroeconomically more realistic version of economics' rational choice theory, focused on optimisation subject to constraints. He mentions rule of thumb/satisficing choice only briefly when stating that most situations in life don't require lots of decision making and end up in habit based choice. This requires more elaboration to give a balanced model of decision making...
His normative advice on making choices disregards the research showing many heuristics are approximately optimal. He appears sometimes to take an old fashioned perspective in which the rational approach to choice is necessarily trying to systematically optimise, consider many options and scenarios, and avoid any mental shortcuts. But bounded rationality emerges as the default for human choices precisely because attempting explicit optimisation and consideration of many possible options and scenarios is too costly in time and effort. -> Humans cannot avoid using mental heuristics and satisficing (picking among e.g just 1-3 options that satisfy some minimum requirements/objectives). Trying to constantly think through more than a few options and avoid all shortcuts is simply too stressful and time consuming.
After explaining how feelings are a useful signal (maybe the main signal) of the value of different choices, Thagard later dismisses feelings as likely a poor guide to choice. There's an inconsistency here: if feelings/emotions are explained as playing the key role in signifying the value of choices, and most human choices are more or less ok, one cannot then advise people to ignore their feelings about options. Maybe Thagard didn't mean it this way, but his writing isn't very nuanced on this core issue.
There is a balance between learning to overcome mental biases and be more analytic in making choices, and just making quick intuitive decisions for most things, and trusting our feelings maybe after some thinking and critiquing/checking of our initial intuitions. Thagard instead throws up a strawman characterisation of highly biased and bad decisions and contrasts it with rules for good decision making such as considering all the options, searching for reliable info etc...These rules are good ideal guidelines, but realistically humans can implement them around 50% towards the direction of optimal subjective expected utility max choice at best.
Finally, we get to the meaning of life. Thagard provides a decent exposition of one modern perspective, in which the meaning (in the sense of value) of life is mostly based on what people empirically report to be valuable to them. Thagard suggests to centre the meaning of life on professional/intellectual achievements, love/friendship and day to day pleasure.
These are the kinds of things people say give meaning to their lives in psychological questionnaires.
Thagard's answer to the meaning of life is mostly reasonable but highly incomplete in a potentially dangerous way.
The problem is that all the 3 sources of meaning he cites can be quite unreliable. It's often hard to find significant meaning in a job, and that meaning is vulnerable to job loss/professional failure. Romantic relationships mostly end in break-up at a 5-year horizon (dropping to around 40% breakdown probability conditional on marriage), and one can easily find oneself alone in modern life. Finally, cumulating pleasurable moments and being more mindfull for them is a good source of happiness, but it's unclear it can even remotely provide that sense of meaning people who ask about the meaning of life are looking for.
Modern cognitive psychology emphasizes the vulnerability of a sense of value/meaning based on work or love. It advocates adopting and practising an attitude of unconditional self-acceptance and self-love (or maybe just self-liking and tolerance). -> Assigning one's life a fundamental value/meaning that is independent of professional/social/romantic success. It highlights people's tendency to value their lives based on work or social relations as a form of mental bias, mispredicting the risks of unhapiness that this may cause.
So overall, this is a book on an important topic with some good points, but with significant flaws. We need more books like this that offer a pragmatic rational-empirical naturalism perspective on life, its choices and meaning. A definitive, solid, book from this perspective that one can unambiguously recommend reading remains to be written.
On the plus side, this is one of the few books tying together the modern cognitive science revolution (inc cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence) with philosophy, and more specifically naturalism.
As such, it provides another counterweight (along with Pinker's Enlightenment Now and a few other books) to anti-scientific direction of much (post) modern philosophy and the typical complaints about the meaninglessness of life in the age of science and the enlightenment, without belief in god or religion (the recent survey book on Neuroexistialism is also valuable in this respect).
The first chapters of the book provide a reasonable argument for adopting a naturalist philosophy enhanced with modern neuroscience/cognitive science, which can be summarised as: Nature is all there is. And science and its methods are the best way to gain knowledge about physical reality and the mind (See also WV Quine's philosophy as summarised e.g in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). There's also a nice diagram of the author's suggested synthesis of modern research on emotions and thinking, which integrates the ideas of emotions as signals of decision values and emotions as signals of physiological states. Thagard's theory of emotions seems like a further development and strengthening of the Somatic Marker Hypothesis of Anthony Damasio (e.g in Descartes' Error).
However, Thagard oversimplifies some key topics either because he thinks that would make things more understandable to non-experts or because he's not an expert in some of the key topics. Thagard is primarily a philosopher, hence may lack the level of knowledge and expertise in neuroscience and psychology of cognitive scientists coming from neurobiology/psychology side. I suspect as a philosopher he also has a bias towards normative prescriptions for e.g decision making that may not properly reflect the cognitive limitations/constraints on the human mind.
His treatment of decision science and the psychology of choice provides a heavily distorted caricature rather than a good synthesis. He misrepresents expected utility theory and microeconomics/microeconometrics in a few short paragraphs, showing very little actual knowledge of the use of (expected) utility theory to generate applied econometric models for example. His model of choice as inference to the best decision is similar to a neuroeconomically more realistic version of economics' rational choice theory, focused on optimisation subject to constraints. He mentions rule of thumb/satisficing choice only briefly when stating that most situations in life don't require lots of decision making and end up in habit based choice. This requires more elaboration to give a balanced model of decision making...
His normative advice on making choices disregards the research showing many heuristics are approximately optimal. He appears sometimes to take an old fashioned perspective in which the rational approach to choice is necessarily trying to systematically optimise, consider many options and scenarios, and avoid any mental shortcuts. But bounded rationality emerges as the default for human choices precisely because attempting explicit optimisation and consideration of many possible options and scenarios is too costly in time and effort. -> Humans cannot avoid using mental heuristics and satisficing (picking among e.g just 1-3 options that satisfy some minimum requirements/objectives). Trying to constantly think through more than a few options and avoid all shortcuts is simply too stressful and time consuming.
After explaining how feelings are a useful signal (maybe the main signal) of the value of different choices, Thagard later dismisses feelings as likely a poor guide to choice. There's an inconsistency here: if feelings/emotions are explained as playing the key role in signifying the value of choices, and most human choices are more or less ok, one cannot then advise people to ignore their feelings about options. Maybe Thagard didn't mean it this way, but his writing isn't very nuanced on this core issue.
There is a balance between learning to overcome mental biases and be more analytic in making choices, and just making quick intuitive decisions for most things, and trusting our feelings maybe after some thinking and critiquing/checking of our initial intuitions. Thagard instead throws up a strawman characterisation of highly biased and bad decisions and contrasts it with rules for good decision making such as considering all the options, searching for reliable info etc...These rules are good ideal guidelines, but realistically humans can implement them around 50% towards the direction of optimal subjective expected utility max choice at best.
Finally, we get to the meaning of life. Thagard provides a decent exposition of one modern perspective, in which the meaning (in the sense of value) of life is mostly based on what people empirically report to be valuable to them. Thagard suggests to centre the meaning of life on professional/intellectual achievements, love/friendship and day to day pleasure.
These are the kinds of things people say give meaning to their lives in psychological questionnaires.
Thagard's answer to the meaning of life is mostly reasonable but highly incomplete in a potentially dangerous way.
The problem is that all the 3 sources of meaning he cites can be quite unreliable. It's often hard to find significant meaning in a job, and that meaning is vulnerable to job loss/professional failure. Romantic relationships mostly end in break-up at a 5-year horizon (dropping to around 40% breakdown probability conditional on marriage), and one can easily find oneself alone in modern life. Finally, cumulating pleasurable moments and being more mindfull for them is a good source of happiness, but it's unclear it can even remotely provide that sense of meaning people who ask about the meaning of life are looking for.
Modern cognitive psychology emphasizes the vulnerability of a sense of value/meaning based on work or love. It advocates adopting and practising an attitude of unconditional self-acceptance and self-love (or maybe just self-liking and tolerance). -> Assigning one's life a fundamental value/meaning that is independent of professional/social/romantic success. It highlights people's tendency to value their lives based on work or social relations as a form of mental bias, mispredicting the risks of unhapiness that this may cause.
So overall, this is a book on an important topic with some good points, but with significant flaws. We need more books like this that offer a pragmatic rational-empirical naturalism perspective on life, its choices and meaning. A definitive, solid, book from this perspective that one can unambiguously recommend reading remains to be written.
November 16, 2011
The only reason this book got a star is because I had to rate it. I wasted far too much time reading this book assuming, hoping ... thinking the next page would get better. Making matters even worse is that Thagard doesn't offer any new insight or provide any utility into this subject; he failed in synthesizing findings from others' works to support his positions and conflated concepts from various sciences/philosophies to create an image of a cohesive idea. What ever you do, just don't make the same mistake I made by reading it...
October 10, 2016
It's very brave of paul Thagard to attempt to discuss the 'ultimate question' using neuroscience. I like many aspects of the book but more research is needed.
March 5, 2024
Amazone
Unintended science fiction
We have heard stories of the "mad scientist", and perhaps now we can speak of "mad scientism".
It concerns scientists and their contemporary emulators like philosophers who insist beforehand that all reality must be material, admitting no distinct entity like consciousness or the spiritual, with particular dread of the supernatural.
Professor Thagard is an intense practitioner of scientism. He rejects not only a God and immortality, but also free will, found incompatible with a mechanistic brain, which he identifies with mind.
The brain is of course dominant in the book's title, and, if I be allowed the pun, I question how well equipped with it the author is, let alone with wisdom, about which he tries to lecture the reader beginning with the first chapter (p.1).
He argues (p.120) that "free will is an illusion we can do without", saying subsequently that the chapter is concerned "with the normative question of how people ought to make decisions".
If there is no free will, what is the point to "normative", "ought to", or "decisions", considering we have no choice in these matters?
This contradiction occurs throughout the book, with many other illogicalities.
He incessantly falls back on scientific particulars observed in the brain, connecting them with conscious events in the effort to demonstrate that conscious events are identical with the connected brain particulars.
He and his colleagues do not claim to have established that identity, but hope springs eternal. But one may ask: what would establish the identity? All one can find is more detailed association of brain occurrences with conscious events. Their appearances are not the same, and they can only by fiat be decided to be the same.
Comparisons are made with such as "water [as] H2O" (p.43) or atoms, that we "once defined in terms of indivisibility, but [which] now we divide...into myriads of subatomic particles" (p.36).
The last comparison is nonsense. If atoms are defined as indivisible, then they cannot be divisible. What happened was a redefinition, not an elucidation.
The case with water concerns physical, 3-dimensional, objects, identified in various ways: seen from different angles, composed of certain material, and so on. But consciousness is distinguished from its objects by consisting of its ingredients and no more.
With the author's presumed absence of any reality outside the material one, he aims to substitute any hope for, for instance, an afterlife with a "meaning" of life, as also given in the book's title. It is not clear what his meaning of "meaning" is here.
The word usually concerns linguistic content, and used elsewhere it becomes obscure. The author appears to look for some justification for living, offering some odd proposals.
He is in the entire book stuck on the triad of love, work and play as the "meaning", which appears quite shallow.
We seem to have deeper motives behind, at least, work and play. Might it be attaining happiness? But no. He discards happiness as a goal, considering it merely "a product of goal satisfaction" (p.146). Goodbye "pursuit of happiness".
Apparently he wants to substitute "meaning" for "happiness" to dissuade one from hoping for more than a mundane life.
The author nonetheless struggles with the role of morality in a world barren of clear moral guidance. Striking is his distorted sense of proportion, evidently due to an extreme political bias in the direction of "political correctness".
He ad nauseam holds up alleged "torture" as somehow the ultimate in immorality, with particular reference to the supposed torture of men held in connection with terrorism. He cites the known dilemma when one evil can only be prevented by another, presumably lesser, evil. This, however, deals chiefly with saving some life in compensation for some other. A lesser evil than death is hardly balanced opposite death. Even so there have been non-murderous crimes much more horrible than the infliction of displeasure or even pain our author views myopically as inadmissible "torture" in order to save many lives.
Paul Vjecsner
Unintended science fiction
We have heard stories of the "mad scientist", and perhaps now we can speak of "mad scientism".
It concerns scientists and their contemporary emulators like philosophers who insist beforehand that all reality must be material, admitting no distinct entity like consciousness or the spiritual, with particular dread of the supernatural.
Professor Thagard is an intense practitioner of scientism. He rejects not only a God and immortality, but also free will, found incompatible with a mechanistic brain, which he identifies with mind.
The brain is of course dominant in the book's title, and, if I be allowed the pun, I question how well equipped with it the author is, let alone with wisdom, about which he tries to lecture the reader beginning with the first chapter (p.1).
He argues (p.120) that "free will is an illusion we can do without", saying subsequently that the chapter is concerned "with the normative question of how people ought to make decisions".
If there is no free will, what is the point to "normative", "ought to", or "decisions", considering we have no choice in these matters?
This contradiction occurs throughout the book, with many other illogicalities.
He incessantly falls back on scientific particulars observed in the brain, connecting them with conscious events in the effort to demonstrate that conscious events are identical with the connected brain particulars.
He and his colleagues do not claim to have established that identity, but hope springs eternal. But one may ask: what would establish the identity? All one can find is more detailed association of brain occurrences with conscious events. Their appearances are not the same, and they can only by fiat be decided to be the same.
Comparisons are made with such as "water [as] H2O" (p.43) or atoms, that we "once defined in terms of indivisibility, but [which] now we divide...into myriads of subatomic particles" (p.36).
The last comparison is nonsense. If atoms are defined as indivisible, then they cannot be divisible. What happened was a redefinition, not an elucidation.
The case with water concerns physical, 3-dimensional, objects, identified in various ways: seen from different angles, composed of certain material, and so on. But consciousness is distinguished from its objects by consisting of its ingredients and no more.
With the author's presumed absence of any reality outside the material one, he aims to substitute any hope for, for instance, an afterlife with a "meaning" of life, as also given in the book's title. It is not clear what his meaning of "meaning" is here.
The word usually concerns linguistic content, and used elsewhere it becomes obscure. The author appears to look for some justification for living, offering some odd proposals.
He is in the entire book stuck on the triad of love, work and play as the "meaning", which appears quite shallow.
We seem to have deeper motives behind, at least, work and play. Might it be attaining happiness? But no. He discards happiness as a goal, considering it merely "a product of goal satisfaction" (p.146). Goodbye "pursuit of happiness".
Apparently he wants to substitute "meaning" for "happiness" to dissuade one from hoping for more than a mundane life.
The author nonetheless struggles with the role of morality in a world barren of clear moral guidance. Striking is his distorted sense of proportion, evidently due to an extreme political bias in the direction of "political correctness".
He ad nauseam holds up alleged "torture" as somehow the ultimate in immorality, with particular reference to the supposed torture of men held in connection with terrorism. He cites the known dilemma when one evil can only be prevented by another, presumably lesser, evil. This, however, deals chiefly with saving some life in compensation for some other. A lesser evil than death is hardly balanced opposite death. Even so there have been non-murderous crimes much more horrible than the infliction of displeasure or even pain our author views myopically as inadmissible "torture" in order to save many lives.
Paul Vjecsner
April 19, 2012
I think I would've liked this book much better in my teenage years than I do now. Now it seems to border on overly simplistic. His main thesis that the mind is the brain is probably NOT a novel idea to many of the people that may be attracted to this sort of book, yet he goes into great detail explaining the benefits of rational thought over superstition (what he called evidence-based reasoning versus faith-based reasoning). (Nothing wrong with writing a book about this, by the way, but I think that people who are interested in the "neurological unpinnings of how our brains work, probably don't need to be convinced that antiquated notions of "the immoral soul" are, well, antiquated.)
The book could be summed up very simply: "we are just neurons firing away in our brains". If you already believe that, you can probably skip this book, although you may find some nuggets of interesting reasoning that further reinforces that belief. If you don't believe this, Thagard will try to convince you of it here and he is very persuasive.
As a post-modernist I was put off by:
a.) his straw man arguments against pomo theories and the illogical assumption that post-modernist theories of knowledge are somehow incompatible with this way of looking at the brain (indeed I think the two go together nicely);
b.) his assumption that "objectivity" is possible despite his own claims that brains interpret and evaluate information presented to us through our senses about the world around us ("constructive realism" he calls his brand of epistemology);
Also I hoped he'd delve into interesting questions such as what this means for a concept of identity. He only spends a couple paragraphs on this and comes up with a slight twist on the old "we are our experiences" theory that is simply "we are our brain processes".
I do like his introduction to "neurology for beginners" and his explanations of how multiple and simultaneous brain processes constitute thought but I could've gotten the gist of what he was saying in a brief article instead of an entire book trying to convince me of things I already believe.
To head off accusations of amorality or immorality from the religious, the second half of the book outlines how we can still construct a code of morality and meaning based on this science-based view of ourselves. Given that I've never had a problem with coming up with a solid ethical code despite being an atheist, I think I'll skip this part and call it a day.
The book could be summed up very simply: "we are just neurons firing away in our brains". If you already believe that, you can probably skip this book, although you may find some nuggets of interesting reasoning that further reinforces that belief. If you don't believe this, Thagard will try to convince you of it here and he is very persuasive.
As a post-modernist I was put off by:
a.) his straw man arguments against pomo theories and the illogical assumption that post-modernist theories of knowledge are somehow incompatible with this way of looking at the brain (indeed I think the two go together nicely);
b.) his assumption that "objectivity" is possible despite his own claims that brains interpret and evaluate information presented to us through our senses about the world around us ("constructive realism" he calls his brand of epistemology);
Also I hoped he'd delve into interesting questions such as what this means for a concept of identity. He only spends a couple paragraphs on this and comes up with a slight twist on the old "we are our experiences" theory that is simply "we are our brain processes".
I do like his introduction to "neurology for beginners" and his explanations of how multiple and simultaneous brain processes constitute thought but I could've gotten the gist of what he was saying in a brief article instead of an entire book trying to convince me of things I already believe.
To head off accusations of amorality or immorality from the religious, the second half of the book outlines how we can still construct a code of morality and meaning based on this science-based view of ourselves. Given that I've never had a problem with coming up with a solid ethical code despite being an atheist, I think I'll skip this part and call it a day.
December 21, 2011
I had hopes for this book and it covers a subject in which I am very interested but I found it tough to get through for some reason. The chapter structure is interesting in that he kind of tells what he is going to say, says it and then recaps what he said. Reading just the chapter summaries may be a good way to understand the ideas he is getting across. I may check this out again and reread the summaries but for now I needed to read some other books.
Thagard's premise is that life has meaning separate from religion, belief in the supernatural or hope for a life after death. This not a novel concept for atheists or people who understand these aspects of life as cultural or social. He approaches this notion from a scientific direction with discussions of how the brain works. Not based much on how we decide or how memory operates or why we believe things, in contrast to Kahneman's, Shermer's and (whomever wrote "How we decide"), approaches this book arrives, and justifies arriving there, at the summary that meaning of life comes from love, work and play: not a very alarming conclusion, but given with some scientific back-up for it.
Thagard's premise is that life has meaning separate from religion, belief in the supernatural or hope for a life after death. This not a novel concept for atheists or people who understand these aspects of life as cultural or social. He approaches this notion from a scientific direction with discussions of how the brain works. Not based much on how we decide or how memory operates or why we believe things, in contrast to Kahneman's, Shermer's and (whomever wrote "How we decide"), approaches this book arrives, and justifies arriving there, at the summary that meaning of life comes from love, work and play: not a very alarming conclusion, but given with some scientific back-up for it.
January 20, 2013
This book promises more than it delivers. Studies are cited sporadically without enough detail to confirm or question almost anything the author concludes. I wanted a book to expose me to concrete lessons we are learning about the brain, but all I got were guesses based on a few chemicals changing concentration. You can learn more by watching a few TED videos about the brain than reading this highly repetitive, poorly presented content in Thagard's book. Please let me know of books in this category that deliver because I love the topic.
July 12, 2015
I read this because I had approached Thagard in an attempt to do research with him; he told me he wouldn't talk to me before I read his book. After reading his book, I decided I no longer wanted to do research with him.
September 5, 2020
Muddled untidy chapters! If you look for satisfying answers to the title, you will not find them! I recommend a summary version of the book if you want the big picture. Nevertheless, there is a lot of valuable scientific information, arguments, and epistemologies. If you want more specific detailed pieces, that not necessary answering the theme of the book, than go for it and give it a try. Also, I have to say I didn’t agree with several arguments, yet they were justified and scientific-based to be fair. I am just of different position and stand to those arguments ( regarding naturalism, minds are brains, sometimes reductionism although he save it with following view of multi-level explanations etc.). I had the feeling that there were a lot of nit-picking to give the causality of why love, work and play are the meaning of life, digging in neuroscience, philosophy and cognitive science to justify the author’s believes and build a story for the book and fill the pages! The bottom line, Did I learn something? YES. Did I have a fulfilling prove to the ‘strong’ hypothesis and statement? Unfortunately NO.
January 15, 2020
If you are looking for a very basic, high-level introduction and are interested in a neurological explanation of thinking and the meaning of life, this may be the book for you. The authors sees work, love, and play as the meaning of life for both religious and non-religious people alike. I was looking for a bit of a deeper dive into the topic. The book was well written in terms of language, but the frequent political judgments and basic examples detracted from the value of the book. Also, the reduction to most of the topic to neurological processes limited the view quite drastically. It would have been better to talk more about the impact of neurological processes on the human psychology as an outlook of the inter-relatedness of neuro-science, psychology, sociology and philosophy.
June 25, 2011
The Brain and the Meaning of Life by Paul Thagard
"The Brain and the Meaning of Life" is an ambitious book about answering some of the most important philosophical questions. Mr. Thagard makes use of research from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to come up with evidence-based answers to such questions. This 292-page book is composed of the following 10 chapters: 1. We all Need Wisdom, 2. Evidence Beats Faith, 3. Minds Are Brains, 4. How Brains Know Reality, 5. How Brains Feel Emotions, 6. How Brains Decide, 7. Why Life is Worth Living, 8. Needs and Hopes, 9. Ethical Brains, and 10. Making Sense of It All.
Positives:
1. An accessible, well-written book with a touch of humor that tackles some of the most important philosophical questions, such as: What is reality? Why is life worth living? What is reality and how can we know it? What makes actions right or wrong?
2. Great use of the most current scientific evidence and theories to answer the aforementioned profound questions.
3. A very fair and reasonable approach throughout the book. The author does a wonderful job of conveying what we do know versus what remains to be known, in other words a sound scientific approach.
4. An enlightening book indeed. Lucid arguments backed by sound scientific research and Mr. Thagard has the innate ability of pulling everything together in a coherent manner.
5. Why evidence-based arguments are superior to faith-based arguments, an excellent chapter.
6. Compelling defense of why "inference to best explanation" is the best approach to determine the best explanation.
7. How science works.
8. A sound materialist approach to the brain. The mind is what the brain does.
9. Fascinating tidbits and facts throughout.
10. There is no scientific evidence for the soul, "soul" get used to it.
11. We admit enough to say state that conscious experience within the scope of causal explanation is still provisional but plausible. Science is indeed driven by doubt.
12. Mind-brain identity hypothesis stands out.
13. Inferences as neural processes.
14. Brain functions in perception supports constructive realism over empiricism and idealism.
15. Scientific theories as a more reliable guide to reality.
16. Great quotes abound. "Wisdom without knowledge is empty, but knowledge without wisdom is blind."
17. The EMOCON (emotional consciousness) Model illustrated.
18. The concepts of goals like you've never seen before.
19. How decisions occur without free will. The Brain Revolution explored.
20. The meaning of life...work, love and play.
21. Psychological needs as biological needs.
22. Interesting take on morality.
23. How a naturalistic system of evidence-based philosophy is highly coherent with scientific information.
24. Great notes and glossary.
25. An extensive bibliography worthy of this excellent book.
Negatives:
1. Theists and some philosophers may take offense to the attacks on their views.
2. The author does an excellent job of conveying his worldview in an accessible manner but let's face it some concepts are complex no matter how you slice and will require further reading.
In summary, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a very satisfying and enlightening read. Mr. Thagard provides compelling arguments for his theories and along the way debunks inferior philosophies. If you are looking for a book that gives you the meaning in life in a reasoned manner this is clearly it. I can't recommend this book enough and hoping that Mr. Thagard provides a follow up in the future when more evidence is known. Bravo!
Recommendations: "Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris, "Human" by Michael S. Gazzaniga, "Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality" by Laurence Tancredi, "Supersense" by Bruce M. Hood, "The Third Basic Instinct..." by Alex S. Key and "The Myth of Free Will" by Cris Evatt.
"The Brain and the Meaning of Life" is an ambitious book about answering some of the most important philosophical questions. Mr. Thagard makes use of research from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to come up with evidence-based answers to such questions. This 292-page book is composed of the following 10 chapters: 1. We all Need Wisdom, 2. Evidence Beats Faith, 3. Minds Are Brains, 4. How Brains Know Reality, 5. How Brains Feel Emotions, 6. How Brains Decide, 7. Why Life is Worth Living, 8. Needs and Hopes, 9. Ethical Brains, and 10. Making Sense of It All.
Positives:
1. An accessible, well-written book with a touch of humor that tackles some of the most important philosophical questions, such as: What is reality? Why is life worth living? What is reality and how can we know it? What makes actions right or wrong?
2. Great use of the most current scientific evidence and theories to answer the aforementioned profound questions.
3. A very fair and reasonable approach throughout the book. The author does a wonderful job of conveying what we do know versus what remains to be known, in other words a sound scientific approach.
4. An enlightening book indeed. Lucid arguments backed by sound scientific research and Mr. Thagard has the innate ability of pulling everything together in a coherent manner.
5. Why evidence-based arguments are superior to faith-based arguments, an excellent chapter.
6. Compelling defense of why "inference to best explanation" is the best approach to determine the best explanation.
7. How science works.
8. A sound materialist approach to the brain. The mind is what the brain does.
9. Fascinating tidbits and facts throughout.
10. There is no scientific evidence for the soul, "soul" get used to it.
11. We admit enough to say state that conscious experience within the scope of causal explanation is still provisional but plausible. Science is indeed driven by doubt.
12. Mind-brain identity hypothesis stands out.
13. Inferences as neural processes.
14. Brain functions in perception supports constructive realism over empiricism and idealism.
15. Scientific theories as a more reliable guide to reality.
16. Great quotes abound. "Wisdom without knowledge is empty, but knowledge without wisdom is blind."
17. The EMOCON (emotional consciousness) Model illustrated.
18. The concepts of goals like you've never seen before.
19. How decisions occur without free will. The Brain Revolution explored.
20. The meaning of life...work, love and play.
21. Psychological needs as biological needs.
22. Interesting take on morality.
23. How a naturalistic system of evidence-based philosophy is highly coherent with scientific information.
24. Great notes and glossary.
25. An extensive bibliography worthy of this excellent book.
Negatives:
1. Theists and some philosophers may take offense to the attacks on their views.
2. The author does an excellent job of conveying his worldview in an accessible manner but let's face it some concepts are complex no matter how you slice and will require further reading.
In summary, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a very satisfying and enlightening read. Mr. Thagard provides compelling arguments for his theories and along the way debunks inferior philosophies. If you are looking for a book that gives you the meaning in life in a reasoned manner this is clearly it. I can't recommend this book enough and hoping that Mr. Thagard provides a follow up in the future when more evidence is known. Bravo!
Recommendations: "Moral Landscape" by Sam Harris, "Human" by Michael S. Gazzaniga, "Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality" by Laurence Tancredi, "Supersense" by Bruce M. Hood, "The Third Basic Instinct..." by Alex S. Key and "The Myth of Free Will" by Cris Evatt.
March 25, 2015
For more than half of the book the author writes about the view that we are mere chemical in action, the rest of the book he keeps repeating (perhaps like twenty times) that work, play and love are the columns upon which to create a meaningful life.
A quote from the book: "The fact that the universe doesn't care about you should not be horribly distressing as long as there are people who do".
I wonder if our society is actually favouring people to have meaningful jobs, forms of entertainment and relationships. I actually think Mr. Thagard is in a quite unique position in this respect, but that doesn't apply to 99% of people.
A quote from the book: "The fact that the universe doesn't care about you should not be horribly distressing as long as there are people who do".
I wonder if our society is actually favouring people to have meaningful jobs, forms of entertainment and relationships. I actually think Mr. Thagard is in a quite unique position in this respect, but that doesn't apply to 99% of people.
April 5, 2011
Presents the Nay side to the question of the soul's existence--and much more.
Life, to Thagard, means 3 things: finding meaning in one's work, one's hobbies & recreations, and one's relationships. One must find meaning in this life, because there is no god, no life after death and no soul to depend on. Interesting argument, but is it ture? I don't know.
Life, to Thagard, means 3 things: finding meaning in one's work, one's hobbies & recreations, and one's relationships. One must find meaning in this life, because there is no god, no life after death and no soul to depend on. Interesting argument, but is it ture? I don't know.
Want to read
December 14, 2012Tuesday, 18 May 2010: read a review in 7 May issue of Science mag, p. 693. The reviewer was Michael Shermer of Claremont Graduate University and Skeptic magazine.
May 16, 2012
I dig it. Had quibbles here and there, but it was solid for the most part. Sign me up for "neural naturalism." Might apply to where this guy teaches. See journal for details.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews