Review by Choice Review
Many would agree that neurophilosophy began with Churchland's Neurophilosophy (1986), and continued with such other highly regarded works as Brain-wise (CH, Sep'03, 41-0268) and Braintrust (CH, Aug'12, 49-6805). For 15-plus years, Churchland (emer., Univ. of California, San Diego) has focused on both the philosophy of neuroscience and the neuroscience of philosophy. The former domain, like that of philosophy of science, focuses on questions of historical and contemporary importance to the discipline itself. What is the nature of successful description and explanation? What underlying presuppositions about causation, prediction, and method drive a given science? In contrast, the latter domain focuses on a neuroscientific explanation of central philosophical concepts: free will, moral agency, a sense of self, and consciousness. Touching a Nerve continues the themes of Churchland's previous work, but with a twist. Churchland embeds weighty neuroscientific issues in personal stories. Her aim "to interweave the science with the stories" has the effect of providing high-level discussions of traditional neuroscientific topics that are accessible to a much broader audience. None of her usual rigor is diminished, but the field itself opens up to all readers with an interest in the nature of neurophilosophy and its implications for living. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. H. Storl Augustana College (IL)
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
That the human mind is an entirely material entity has implications both unsettling and rich, according to this fascinating excursion into neuroscience and philosophy. Churchland (Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality), a U.C. San Diego "neurophilosopher" and MacArthur Fellow, presents a tour of cutting-edge brain research that grounds consciousness, personality, thoughts and feelings in neural structures, electrochemical signaling, hormones, and unconscious information processing. She applies these findings to some of philosophy's great moral, ontological, and metaphysical questions, asking how genetic and environmental influences affect violence and criminality, how altruism evolved in our mammalian forebears, how hormones and brain structure might determine sexuality, and how our sense of self and not-self emerges from the brain's internal communications; most subversively, she rejects the existence of the soul and insists that the brain's material mechanisms are the only valid explanations for mental phenomena. Writing in a lively, down-to-earth style, the author interweaves an accessible, engrossing exposition of neuroscience with a primer on philosophical debates from Aristotle to Freud and Daniel Dennett, illustrating it with episodes from her girlhood in a Canadian farming village, which seems to have nurtured in her a pitiless yet folksy atheism. Gently but firmly brushing aside pious mumbo jumbo, Churchland embraces a scientific worldview that consoles less but illuminates more. 16 illus. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Neurophilosophy is the interdisciplinary study of philosophy and neuroscience. Churchland (philosophy, emerita, Univ. of California, San Diego), a neuro-philosopher, blends personal reflections, stories, science, and humor to create a somewhat meandering but very personable discourse on her subject. She shows how Einstein, Galileo, Darwin, Plato, and Spinoza's theories redefined how humans viewed both the universe and the self (i.e., their explorations had both scientific and philosophical effects). Churchland goes on to examine how new discoveries in neuroscience are likewise causing philosophy's traditional questions about faith, social attachment, choice, learning, morality, and the self to be reconsidered. Like a good professor intent on generating robust discussion, she constantly asks questions of her reader: "Can a person live a spiritual life.if you no longer believe you have a soul?"; "Where do values come from?"; "Are humans monogamous?" Churchland answers these questions and more in her assured style, often using stories about her childhood on a farm in rural British Columbia to explain her perspective. VERDICT A good choice for book clubs searching for an introspective, thought-provoking work of nonfiction that will promote intense discussion. Recommended.-Beth Dalton, Littleton, CO (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Churchland (Emeritus, Philosophy/Univ. of California, San Diego; Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality, 2011, etc.) probes the interface between our perception of our own mental processes and our growing knowledge of how our brains function. The author is sharply critical of those who make claims that "free choice is an illusion" and "the self is an illusion," the kind of hype she dismisses as self-promoting "[n]eurojunkover-egged ideas about the brain [that] turn out to rest on modest, ambiguous, and hard-to interpret data." She also dismisses mind-body dualism. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship as co-founder of the field of neurophilosophy, the author weaves together the teachings of philosophers (Aristotle, Plato, Descartes) and scientists (Galvani, Darwin and Helmholtz) to grapple with the problem. She incorporates illustrative anecdotes from her childhood in a small farming community to support her contention that accepting the nonexistence of a spiritual realm separate from the natural world need not diminish spirituality. Recognizing that mental life, spiritual values, joys and sorrows emerge from the functioning of our brains in no way diminishes their reality. Churchland also speculates on the evolutionary leap in the mental life of mammals, which nurture their newborns, and the mental acuity demanded of predators and their prey in the struggle to survive. Reprising the latest advances in neuropsychology, she explains how brain circuitry is organized to model the world (internally and externally) in a series of maps. Going back to Freud's earliest research in neurology, which led him to recognize the existence of unconscious mental functions, Churchland probes the difference between habits and reflexes and between consciousness and semiconscious states such as sleep and coma. Wide-ranging, insightful and provocative--a book to savor.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
