Guardian review: “In search of the God neuron”
Written on December 27, 2008
Steven Rose reviews four books in today’s Guardian (27 Dec 2008):
- Splendours and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity and the Quest for Human Happiness by Semir Zeki (coming soon in the US, available in the UK) [Amazon has “Search Inside”, so an excerpt is available]
- The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God by David J Linden,
- The Evolution of Morality by Richard Joyce,
- Damasio’s Error and Descartes’ Truth: An Inquiry into Consciousness, Metaphysics, and Epistemology by Andrew Gluck.
and
Rose (author of The 21st Century Brain: Explaining, Mending and Manipulating the Mind) reminds us that “it is not brains that have concepts or acquire knowledge. It is people, using their brains” and concludes:
If humans do have an evolved sense of morality, or indeed of beauty or romantic love, the evidence shows that in practice our standards are remarkably flexible. Under these circumstances, to seek for their neurobiological correlates may be on a par with hunting the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow. With the difference that the gold could at least be put to practical use.
Filed in: cognitive science,mind.
