my mind on books

“Arguing for Embodied Consciousness” at Deric Bownds’ Mindblog excerpts a review from Science of What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture by Edward Slingerland. This book came up earlier in a review article on evolutionary psychology in The Walrus (Sept. 2008).

Google Video has a talk by Slingerland from “Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0” (Dec. 2007). Check out the “related videos” there for Daniel Dennett and other speakers.

Product description for the book:

Product Description
What Science Offers the Humanities examines some of the deep problems facing current approaches to the study of culture. It focuses especially on the excesses of postmodernism, but also acknowledges serious problems with postmodernism’s harshest critics. In short, Edward Slingerland argues that in order for the humanities to progress, its scholars need to take seriously contributions from the natural sciences-and particular research on human cognition-which demonstrate that any separation of the mind and the body is entirely untenable. The author provides suggestions for how humanists might begin to utilize these scientific discoveries without conceding that science has the last word on morality, religion, art, and literature. Calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the “blank slate” theory of nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason, What Science Offers the Humanities replaces the human-sciences divide with a more integrated approach to the study of culture.