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"What if what we consider to be reason-based, deliberative judgment is really the product of involuntary mental sensations? In A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind, Dr. Robert Burton takes a close look at the key false assumptions that permeate the field of cognitive science and offers a new way of exploring how our brains generate thought. The essential paradox that drives this cutting-edge theory is that the same mechanisms that prevent understanding the mind also generate a sense that we can attain such understanding. In A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind, Burton presents his theory of the 'mental sensory system'--a system that generates the main components of consciousness: a sense of self, a sense of choice and free will, and how we make moral decisions. Bringing together anecdotes, practical thought experiments, and cutting-edge neuroscience to show how these various strands of thought and mental sensations interact, A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind offers a powerful tool for knowing what we can and cannot say about the mind; how to discern good from bad cognitive science studies; and most importantly, how to consider the moral implications of these studies. This is a pathbreaking model for considering the interaction between conscious and unconscious thought"--… (more)
User reviews
To flesh out the complex and overlapping relationships between agency, intention, and causation, consider how, as little kids, we learned to establish causation by
This is a family of idiots. That's my inescapable conclusion. (And the inclusion of the word "shiny" tells us that Burton knows that.) I want nothing to do with any of them.
I wish I could tell you that that was the page on which I abandoned this inflated, pretentious conglomeration of old news and lame examples, but in truth I persevered for another 18 grueling pages before throwing in the towel. At that point I couldn't stand to read any more of his chronically stupid illustrations or see him thrash the same old arguments in language high in verbosity and low in insight and revelation.
I really liked the author's earlier work, On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not. It altered my thinking in a number of respects and gave me a way of talking about the difference between feeling sure about something and knowing it for a fact. Because of that, I wanted to like this book and gave it a generous opportunity to win me over. Instead, this one feels like an attempt to rehash the same material and sell it again--something any number of popular nonfiction authors manage shamelessly and others just shouldn't try.
(Abandoned on page 66; not rated.)