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Are You an Illusion? (Heretics) Paperback – 6 Jun 2014

by Mary Midgley (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars 13 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: Routledge (6 Jun. 2014)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1844657922
  • ISBN-13: 978-1844657926
  • Product Dimensions: 1.9 x 12.7 x 19.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 374,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"It is a very big little book. Midgley manages in just 150 pages to say more than most scholars manage in a lifetime. ... Midgley combines both the ability to place intellectual fashions in their broader context with having lived long enough to personally witness the rise and fall of many of them. ...in this bite-size book she digests some of the toughest intellectual challenges of our day." -- Stephen Cave, Financial Times

About the Author

Mary Midgley is one of the most respected moral philosophers of her generation and the author of many books including The Solitary Self (2010).

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent, analytical
By Mr M Mielniczek on 28 Oct. 2014
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
Excellent, analytical, objective and unemotional deconstruction of crude materialist philosophy. Demonstrates the hollowness of behavioural/neural psychology attempts to dispense with he notions and realities of self and free will. A very clever, warm, deep and common sense approach to a complicated subject. Mary Midgley gallops through a swathe of disciplines in a way in which few modern intellectuals are capable.
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4.0 out of 5 starsIf our sense of self is an illusion, how does anything get done?
By Elizabeth Webster on 1 Sept. 2014
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is a book everyone should read to become aware, as most people are not, of the frameworks within which science has made such astonishing progress over the centuries, such the people put their trust in it beyond all else. Without understanding these, any idea, including the strange one held by eminent scientists including Crick, the 'father' of DNA, our sense of self may well seem to be an illusion.
Science is normally presented as pure, untainted by messy human subjectivity. 'The scientific method' has become seen as the only way of knowing, of developing the evidence needed to come to conclusions and make progress. As Mary Midgley points out, for example, what started as a hypothesis to see how statistical methods could be applied to human behaviour, became a strongly held view that all there is to humans is their behaviour.
The primacy of physics has much to do with the fascination with numbers which goes back to Pythagoras and the discovery of the mathematical basis for musical harmony. But numbers are not an appropriate medium for all explantion as shown by the table example below.
Her argument is not to deny what has been achieved in the sciences, but to put it in context, to show that the sciences represent one, very powerful, way of looking at things, but there are others. She uses the simple case of a table which can be described in terms of its make-up at the nano-science level, or as a carpenter would want to know if he wanted to copy it - or we could add, a householder who wanted to determine whether it would fit and look good in the space available in their home. None of these explanations are better or more true than the other, each is appropriate to the relevant context.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsA book which disproves its own thesis, but offers valuable insights along the way
By M. D. Holley TOP 1000 REVIEWER on 26 April 2014
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This is a book of two halves - the second half is superb and extremely profound. The first half is very weak, falling into the narrow, blinkered way of thinking that the book as a whole argues against.

So let's start with the second half. The author reminds us that there is always more than one way of approaching a problem, and that you can use different tools for different jobs. A spanner works best if you need to turn a nut. For screws, a screwdriver works much better than a spanner. Anyone who tries to argue that a screwdriver is the only acceptable tool that may ever be used, and that spanner users are somehow 'wrong', is deluding themselves. Similarly, if looking at dealing with specific medical problems of the brain, a reductionist and mechanistic approach works well. If you are trying to understand and manage a group of people, a more holistic approach to the 'self' will work better.

Midgley is also very good at showing the continuity between living and non living matter, and the continuity between human and non human animals. The world view she sets out in the second half of her book is extremely cutting edge, insightful and well balanced.

But what about the first half? Amazingly, Midgley spends the entire time going directly against the main principle of her own book! She seems hell bent on discrediting reductionist science, in particular in relation to brain studies. She has an almost pathological hatred of physics (apparently chemistry and biology are less evil). She claims that analytical brain studies have yielded nothing of value (perhaps she should try Dick Swaab's excellent book, 'We Are Our Brains' to see how wrong she is in this).Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsWonderful
By George Hegel on 11 Jun. 2014
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What a sparkling (except for a subbing error on the first page). MM is a delight to read. She almost made with agree with her about free will! She writes with great humanity. I actually learnt that being 'anthropomorphic' towards animals (ie treating them as a dimension of ourselves) might be a good thing. But of course it is not that we are anthropomorphic that is the problem but that we are selectively so. We stroke cats and door but eat pigs. Where is the logic there?
Also, an here is a criticism, she should given her attack on the author of the 'the Selfish Gene' a bit of rest. She made it before and it stands. The general point is that evolutionary thought has been reduced to a smaller mind (ie reductionist - genetic rather than whole creature) version of Darwinism. I would have liked her to consider wider span of agreements other philosophers of the older variety who might agree with what she had to say but start in a different place (the pragmatists, Merleau-Ponty, Bourdieu, etc). Perhaps she finds them too obscure.

All of that said, a cracking read!
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2.0 out of 5 starsIrritating.
By Judy Corstjens on 12 Mar. 2015
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Mary Midgley is a clever woman, but not above a bit of sophistry in favour of her cause. She has some good points about the levels of analysis that we need to use to understand different phenomena - for example to understand your personal relationships you will not get far by trying to understand, say your spouse's brain at the level of neurones. However, Midgley uses this to make anti-science jibes which do not follow.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

good

Published 13 months ago by sharon king
4.0 out of 5 starsMidgley Illusions.

An interesting publication from one of my old philosophy teachers. I think I need to read it again.

Published 16 months ago by Andrew Ions
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Common sense philosophy at its best.

Published on 15 Nov. 2014 by Adrian
3.0 out of 5 starsI enjoyed reading this book as a contrast to several books ...

I enjoyed reading this book as a contrast to several books describing that the self IS an illusion. The big mistake is that Midgeley claims that science has undermined the concept... Read more

Published on 7 Nov. 2014 by K. Chopping
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Lived up to my expectations completely. Delivered promptly. Very pleased

Published on 23 Oct. 2014 by Ms W. Hughes
4.0 out of 5 starsValuable reading, but does it miss the point?

A thought provoking book that opened up new ways of thinking to me. I liked the suggestion that sensing a table by sight and touch give two perceptions that are different about the... Read more

Published on 14 July 2014 by Andrew Bill
1.0 out of 5 starsIncompetent, vague, and muddled

This is a very short book: short in length, short of argument, and short of facts. Midgley cherry-picks from random quotes to make her case, but her writing lacks structure and... Read more

Published on 11 Jun. 2014 by Tony Bayliss
1.0 out of 5 starsDisappointing

Really disappointing and showing lack of knowledge and understanding from someone who is purported to be a philosopher
Not to be recommended to anyone A real waste of money

Published on 30 April 2014 by Dennis Davey

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