- Hardcover: 248 pages
- Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (31 Aug 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1403994951
- ISBN-13: 978-1403994950
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 16.4 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,167,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
De La Mettrie's Ghost: The Story of Decisions
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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
'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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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Collaborative Reading?,
This review is from: De La Mettrie's Ghost: The Story Of Decisions (MacSci) (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:
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Outstanding Book!,
By Dr. Richard G. Petty - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: De La Mettrie's Ghost: The Story Of Decisions (MacSci) (Hardcover)
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 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Nice try at explaining Free Will, but ultimately a failure,
By Greg Nyquist - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: De La Mettrie's Ghost: The Story Of Decisions (MacSci) (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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