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De La Mettrie's Ghost: The Story of Decisions
 
 
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De La Mettrie's Ghost: The Story of Decisions [Kindle Edition]

Chris Nunn (Author)
2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review) |
Print List Price: £34.50
Kindle Price: £13.02 includes VAT* & free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
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Review

'Meaty is one word for this dense little book. Rich and savory are others.' - Booklist

'4/5: an accessible and well-written book...I urge you to read it and decide on these critical issues for yourself.' - Dr Susan Blackmore author of Conciousness, A Very Short Introduction(OUP) writing in BBC Focus Magazine

'This is an amazingly clear book about free will that points us in some interesting directions.' - Mary Midgley, Times Higher Educational Supplement

'very enjoyable - an important contribution to the dialogues on free will' - PsycCRITIQUES, American Psychological Association

Dr Susan Blackmore, BBC Focus Magazine

'4/5: an accessible and well-written book...I urge you to read it and decide on these critical issues for yourself'
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Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 423 KB
  • Print Length: 239 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1403994951
  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (7 Oct 2005)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B001BNT4AM
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #425,788 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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More About the Author

Chris Nunn
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› Visit Amazon's Chris Nunn Page

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
I read this book with a friend. We tried quite hard but the author did not give either of us a clear message about what he wanted to say or what he had concluded from his studies. On the whole, it looks as if it might be an interesting topic - "the story of decisions" - but we had to agree that we had not learnt much, if anything, about the way decisions are taken.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:  2 reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
An Outstanding Book! 10 Jan 2006
By Dr. Richard G. Petty - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a rare "must read" book for anyone with even a passing interest in choice and free will. So many writers know the extent of their knowledge and expertise, and remain within their comfort zone.

Chris Nunn is not afraid to go into areas of knowledge beyond his own area of expertise, and demonstrates a rare mastery of disparate disciplines.

A real page turner, and an exceptional contribution.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Nice try at explaining Free Will, but ultimately a failure 15 Jun 2007
By Greg Nyquist - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
De La Mettrie's Ghost seeks to provide a scientific explanation for free will. The books author, Chris Nunn, argues that "stories," recorded in memory, provide the nexus for choice. Unfortunately, this argument, almost from the beginning, veers toward a sort of cultural determinism. The only freedom that his account of human decision making allows for is an individual's haphazard choice of which stories--i.e., which culturally determined objects--are to dominate his life.

Nunn's argument is unconvincing for the simple reason that he is not able to think outside the box of methodological determinism. At some point, champions of free will have to admit that freedom is not explicable within the methodological framework of mechanistic science. Nunn appears to sympathize with panpsychism, but it is only through epistemological dualism that the solution to the problem of free will can be found. Most of the confused ideas about freedom and determinism that arise from science have their source in the failure to distinguish between the terms and symbols and metaphors in which the objects of science are described on the one side and the actual physical objects or processes on the other. Quantum mechanics is particularly prone to such confusions, as it is assumed that the symbols appropriate to describing quantum objects must be analogous to the symbols describing the objects of sense. But this viewpoint makes the mistake of assuming that every aspect of the universe exists for the convenience of the human mind. Only by acknowledging that the universe exists on a different plane of reality from the mind and that different aspects of reality must have thier own unique systems of metaphors and symbols in order to achieve an apt representation within human consciousness can we ever hope to begin to understand freedom within the total context of our knowledge.
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