my mind on books

This is the beginning of a cumulative list to be placed in the sidebar, of books on the neurosciences published in 2007 or forthcoming; some actually appeared in 2006 but have copyright dates of 2007.

Billy’s Halo by Ruth McKernan (London: Black Swan, 2007). [hardcover published in 2006, paperback Jan 07] A neuroscientist’s memoir of her father’s illness and death.

Bioethics and the Brain by Walter Glannon (New York : Oxford University Press, 2007).

Cognitive Psychology: Mind and Brain Edward E Smith; Stephen Michael Kosslyn (Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2007) textbook integrates neuroscience into cognitive psychology

Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge by B Alan Wallace (New York : Columbia University Press, 2007) publisher’s page with links to interviews

Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science: Essential Readings in Neuroethics ed. by Walter Glannon (New York : Dana Press, 2007)

Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience: The Geometry of Excitability and Bursting by Eugene M Izhikevich (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2007). http://vesicle.nsi.edu/users/izhikevich/publications/dsn/index.htm

More on neuroscience – recent & forthcoming books, part 1

Jean Kazez comments on Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, raising an issue about happiness in an unjust society. Haidt used the example of a Brahmin who is happy because of the coherence of his senses, thoughts, and society, despite the injustice of the caste system, an image of happiness which Kazez objects to. It comes down to an issue of moral relativism, whether morality is socially determined or independent of social mores. If morality is independent of society then a sensitive person would not be happy in an unjust society. Otherwise I suppose a sense of injustice could arise when a society fails to live up to its own ideals or there are conflicting ethical ideals within a society.

A similar conflict (or at least an ambiguity) between relative and absolute morality occurs within Hindu mythology – see The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, ch. 5 “The Paradox of the Good Demon: The Clash Between Relative and Absolute Ethics.” Or, for a scifi treatment of the issue, Sideshow by Sheri S. Tepper (which, as I recall, takes an anti-relativist position).

Kazez is the author of Weight of Things: Philosophy and the Good Life.

The latest Encephalon blog carnival includes a review from The Thinking Meat Project of two books on neuroplasticity: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain by Sharon Begley and The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. Also at the Thinking Meat Project is a reading list covering a good selection of mind-related books.

One of the researchers featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Gerd Gigerenzer, has a new book – Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. Gigerenzer is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. (author’s website)

More new books:

The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language by Christine Kenneally

The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body by Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins (forthcoming Aug 28) (some publications available online)

Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer (The Frontiers Collection) by Henry P. Stapp

Evocative Objects: Things We Think With by Sherry Turkle

Metapsychology, a great site for book reviews, has published a review of Self-Consciousness, the recent book by Sebastian Rödl.

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