my mind on books

Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd (University of Auckland) in “The Art of Literature and the Science of Literature” suggests that “Art is a form of cognitive play with pattern….” (The article mentions an upcoming book called On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction but it doesn’t appear to be in the “pre-order” stage yet.)

“AskPhilosophers.org” is one of the sites on the Telegraph’s “101 most useful websites,” a database of questions posed by the public with answers posted by a panel of philosophers. There is also a book based on the site; in the US the title is What Would Socrates Say?: Philosophers answer your questions about love, nothingness, and everything else.

• spiked review of books reviews ‘On Consciousness’ by Ted Honderich
• ‘Proust and the Squid’ reviewed at the Telegraph
• also at the Telegraph: ‘We-Think’
• New Metapsychology reviews this week include ‘Explaining the Brain’and ‘A Critique of Naturalistic Philosophies of Mind’

Sue M. Halpern reviews several recent books on happiness for the New York Review of Books (4/3/08), concluding:

And so it comes back to the problem of relying on overly broad, categorical, static words like fear and happiness to describe, diagnose, predict, and expound, words that don’t get us very far, as patients, as subjects, as readers. This problem with language may explain why, though we all say we’re happy, the library of how-to-get-happy books and why-we’re-not-happy books is expanding. Anyone who spends time in that section of the stacks is likely to cheer Jerome Kagan’s transcendent (hopeful, gracious) and courageous (brave, valiant, courteous) request:

Let us agree to a moratorium on the use of single words, such as fear, anger, joy, and sad, and write about emotional processes with full sentences rather than ambiguous, naked concepts that burden readers with the task of deciding who, whom, why, and especially what.

Links for the books reviewed:

The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky
Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy by Eric Wilson
What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings by Jerome Kagan

“Honorable Mention”: Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman.

Sue Halpern’s forthcoming book is Can’t Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the Front Lines of Memory Research.

“The Lotus and the Synapse” by Sharon Begley (Lab Notes, Newsweek, 3/25/08) discusses neuroplasticity and compassion meditation, in particular research recently published in PLoS ONE: “Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation”.
Begley is the author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves.