my mind on books

In Praise of Copying by Marcus Boon (Harvard University Press, 2010)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

This book is devoted to a deceptively simple but original argument: that copying is an essential part of being human, that the ability to copy is worthy of celebration, and that, without recognizing how integral copying is to being human, we cannot understand ourselves or the world we live in.

In spite of the laws, stigmas, and anxieties attached to it, the word “copying” permeates contemporary culture, shaping discourse on issues from hip hop to digitization to gender reassignment, and is particularly crucial in legal debates concerning intellectual property and copyright. Yet as a philosophical concept, copying remains poorly understood. Working comparatively across cultures and times, Marcus Boon undertakes an examination of what this word means—historically, culturally, philosophically—and why it fills us with fear and fascination. He argues that the dominant legal-political structures that define copying today obscure much broader processes of imitation that have constituted human communities for ages and continue to shape various subcultures today. Drawing on contemporary art, music and film, the history of aesthetics, critical theory, and Buddhist philosophy and practice, In Praise of Copying seeks to show how and why copying works, what the sources of its power are, and the political stakes of renegotiating the way we value copying in the age of globalization.

See also: In Praise of Copying blog

The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships by Stanford professor Clifford Nass with Corina Yen (Penguin, 2010)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

Counterintuitive insights about building successful relationships-based on research into human-computer interaction.

The driver was insistent: “A woman should not be giving directions.” Despite the customer service rep’s reassurance that the navigation system in his car wasn’t actually a woman-just a computer with a female voice-the driver (and many others like him) refused to listen. There was only one person for BMW to call for help: Clifford Nass, one of the world’s leading experts on how people interact with technology.

After two decades of studying problems like BMW’s GPS system, Microsoft’s Clippy (the most reviled animated character of all time), and online evaluations that lead people to lie to their laptops, Nass has developed a powerful theory: Our brains can’t fundamentally distinguish between interacting with people and interacting with devices. We will “protect” a computer’s feelings, feel flattered by a brown-nosing piece of software, and even do favors for technology that has been “nice” to us. All without even realizing it.

In his research at Stanford, Nass has leveraged our fundamentally social relationship with computers to develop and test a series of essential rules for effective human relationships. He has found that the most powerful strategies for working with people aren’t really that complicated, and can be learned from watching what succeeds and fails in technology interfaces. In other words, if a computer can make friends, build teams, and calm powerful emotions, so can any of us.

Nass’s studies reveal many surprising conclusions, such as:

• Mixing criticism into praise-a popular tactic for managers-is a destructive method of evaluation.
• Opposites don’t attract-except when one gradually changes to become more like other.
• Flattery works-even when the recipient knows it’s fake.
• Team-building exercises don’t build teams-but the right T-shirt can
• Misery loves company-but only if the company is miserable, too.

Nass’s discoveries push the boundaries of both psychology and technology and provide nothing less than a new blueprint for successful human relationships.

See also: website for the book

The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology (Bradford Books) by Mark Rowlands (MIT Press, 2010).

(link for amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

There is a new way of thinking about the mind that does not locate mental processes exclusively “in the head.” Some think that this expanded conception of the mind will be the basis of a new science of the mind. In this book, leading philosopher Mark Rowlands investigates the conceptual foundations of this new science of the mind.

Traditional attempts to study the mind are based on the idea that mental processes—perceiving, remembering, thinking, reasoning—exist in brains; they are often described as “software” realized by the “hardware” of the brain. The new way of thinking about the mind has emerged from the confluence of various disciplines in cognitive science ranging from perceptual and developmental psychology to robotics. It emphasizes the ways in which mental processes are embodied (partly made up of extra-neural bodily structures and processes), embedded (designed to function in tandem with the environment), enacted (constituted in part by action), and extended (located in the environment).

The new way of thinking about the mind, Rowlands writes, is actually an old way of thinking that has taken on new form. Rowlands describes a conception of mind that had its clearest expression in phenomenology—in the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. He builds on these views, clarifies and renders consistent the ideas of embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended mind, and develops a unified philosophical treatment of the novel conception of the mind that underlies the new science of the mind.

The Multitasking Mind by Dario D. Salvucci and Niels A. Taatgen (Oxford University Press, USA, 2010)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

Multitasking is all around us: the office worker interrupted by a phone call, the teenager texting while driving, the salesperson chatting while entering an order. When multitasking, the mind juggles all the many tasks we’re doing this second, this hour, this week, and tries to perform them together-sometimes with great ease, sometimes with great difficulty. We don’t often stop to think about how exactly we accomplish these feats of multitasking great and small. How do we switch from one task to another? What types of multitasking are disruptive, and when are they most disruptive? And ultimately, how can we take advantage of the benefits of multitasking while alleviating its negative effects in our daily lives?

This book presents the theory of threaded cognition, a theory that aims to explain the multitasking mind. The theory states that multitasking behavior can be expressed as cognitive threads-independent streams of thought that weave through the mind’s processing resources to produce multitasking behavior, and sometimes experience conflicts to produce multitasking interference. Grounded in the ACT-R cognitive architecture, threaded cognition incorporates computational representations and mechanisms used to simulate and predict multitasking behavior and performance.

The book describes the implications of threaded cognition theory across three traditionally disparate domains: concurrent multitasking (doing multiple tasks at once), sequential multitasking (interrupting and resuming tasks), and multitask skill acquisition (learning and practicing multiple tasks). The work stresses the importance of unifying basic and applied research by alternating between in-depth descriptions of basic research phenomena and broader treatments of phenomena in applied domains, such as driver distraction and human-computer interaction. The book also includes practical guidelines for designers of interactive systems intended for multitasking contexts.

See also: Multitasking on Dario Salvucci’s website, Niels Taatgen’s homepage

Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher (Metropolitan Books, 2010)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—culture shapes language and language, culture

Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language—and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for “blue”?

Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water—a “she”—becomes a “he” once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial. Audacious, delightful, and field-changing, Through the Language Glass is a classic of intellectual discovery.

See also: recent New York Times article based on this book, Neuroanthropology.net response to NY Times article, Guy Deutscher’s website

A revised and updated edition of Mapping the Mind by Rita Carter has been issued by the University of California Press. (by Phoenix in the UK)

Product description from the publisher:

Today a brain scan reveals our thoughts and moods as clearly as an X-ray reveals our bones. We can actually observe a person’s brain registering a joke or experiencing a painful memory. In Mapping the Mind, award-winning journalist Rita Carter draws on the latest imaging technology and science to chart how human behavior and personality reflect the biological mechanisms behind thought and emotion. This acclaimed book, a complete visual guide to the coconut-sized, wrinkled gray mass we carry around inside our heads, has now been completely revised and updated throughout. Among many other topics, Carter explores obsessions and addictions, the differences between men’s and women’s brains, and memory.
• Comprehensively updated for this edition with the latest research, case studies, and contributions from distinguished scientists
• Addresses recent controversies over behavior prediction and prevention
• Includes new information on mirror neurons, unconscious cognition, and abnormalities in attention spans

See also: Author’s website

Three Questions We Never Stop Asking by Michael Kellogg (Prometheus Books, 2010)
(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

What can I know? What may I hope? What ought I to do? These are three questions that—however much we immerse ourselves in the whirl and concerns of everyday life—we cannot, in the end, escape. They intrude themselves, not just in times of personal crisis, but at odd moments and in varied ways. Even those who are not inclined to the discipline of philosophy or even particularly reflective will feel their force on occasion. Whether we develop satisfactory answers or not, wrestling with such questions is part of what it is to be human.

In this excellent introduction to the essential issues that have preoccupied philosophers throughout the centuries, author Michael Kellogg provides fresh and engaging portraits of the greatest thinkers on each of these questions: Plato and Wittgenstein on the possibility of philosophical knowledge; Kant and Nietzsche on the existence of God; Aristotle and Heidegger on human virtue. The first member of the pair is a builder, the second a destroyer. One explores the promise of a theory, the other the consequences of its ruin.

These juxtaposed pairs are not self-contained, however. All six thinkers are engaged in a dialogue with one another on issues that touch our lives directly and profoundly. As Nietzsche explained, “I live as if the centuries were nothing.” The author has arranged them in an order that unveils an ever-deepening understanding of the moral, spiritual and intellectual space in which our lives unfold.

For anyone wishing to discover, or rediscover, philosophy in its original meaning—”the love of wisdom”—this engaging, clearly written, and accessible volume is an excellent place to start.

Despite the title, God Soul Mind Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Reflections on the Spirit World (link for amazon.co.uk) is not primarily about religion or the spirit world from a neuroscientific perspective. Instead, gods and spirits figure as examples of a more general process of social perception that is the real focus of the work.

In a clear, reader-friendly manner, author Michael Graziano describes social perception as a mechanism for constructing simplified models of mental states and intentions. Because we are social animals we developed this capacity for constructing models of other minds. As with perception of objects, social perception is subject to illusions, such as the illusion that a ventriloquist’s dummy is a separate person.

Simplified models of intentionality consist of “point agents” assigned to spatial locations. Such mind-models are the source of concepts of spirits and souls. In this approach, for example, the God of monotheism represents “the perception of a single unified mind behind every otherwise inexplicable event.”

Graziano argues that consciousness can also be understood as a social perceptual model applied inwardly. The account of consciousness seemed to be the real core of the book, an original approach to the problem with potential applications from AI to multiple personality disorder.

Also included is a discussion of the brain circuitry involved in social perception, primarily the superior temporal polysensory (STP) area and the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ).

Graziano also discusses social imitation and memes as the source of human culture. What is missing is an account of the role of culture in affecting what kinds of entities (gods, spirits, souls, etc.) are modeled by the social perceptual system.

[Thanks to Leapfrog Press for allowing me to view an advance copy via NetGalley].

Product description from the publisher:

Written for the general public, God Soul Mind Brain explores the controversial relationship between science and religion by first dismissing the “science versus religion” debate as outdated and unnecessary. The cutting-edge field of social neuroscience explains how our perceptions of our own consciousness, of other people’s minds, and of spirits and gods depend on machinery in the brain that evolved to make us socially intelligent animals. In clear prose without technical jargon, Graziano discusses his and others’ findings in this 20-year-old field of study, and the implications for human spirituality and religion. By addressing head-on the fundamental issues of human consciousness, religion, and God, and how these elements relate to the science of the brain, Graziano presents an entirely new view of religion and science.

See also: “Why We See Spirits and Souls”, Graziano’s article at “Big Questions Online,” with lots of comments; author’s website

An interesting-looking though pricey book from philosopher-physicist Mario Bunge — may be something to check for at your library or through interlibrary loan…

Matter and Mind: A Philosophical Inquiry (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science) (Springer, 2010)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

This book discusses two of the oldest and hardest problems in both science and philosophy: What is matter?, and What is mind? A reason for tackling both problems in a single book is that two of the most influential views in modern philosophy are that the universe is mental (idealism), and that the everything real is material (materialism). Most of the thinkers who espouse a materialist view of mind have obsolete ideas about matter, whereas those who claim that science supports idealism have not explained how the universe could have existed before humans emerged. Besides, both groups tend to ignore the other levels of existence—chemical, biological, social, and technological. If such levels and the concomitant emergence processes are ignored, the physicalism/spiritualism dilemma remains unsolved, whereas if they are included, the alleged mysteries are shown to be problems that science is treating successfully.

See also: Publisher’s webpage for the book

Just Another Ape? by Helene Guldberg (Imprint Academic, 2010)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

Today, the belief that human beings are special is distinctly out of fashion. Almost every day we are presented with new revelations about how animals are so much more like us than we ever imagined. The argument is at its most powerful when it comes to our closest living relatives – the great apes. This book argues that whatever first impressions might tell us, apes are really not ‘just like us’. Science has provided strong evidence that the boundaries between us and other species are vast. Unless we hold on to the belief in our exceptional abilities we will never be able to envision or build a better future – in which case, we might as well be monkeys.

See also: Author’s website