What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain - Hardcover

Changeux, Jean-Pierre; Ricoeur, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691009406 ISBN 13: 9780691009407

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2000

Synopsis

Will understanding our brains help us to know our minds? Or is there an unbridgeable distance between the work of neuroscience and the workings of human consciousness? In a remarkable exchange between neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this book explores the vexed territory between these divergent approaches--and comes to a deeper, more complex perspective on human nature.


Ranging across diverse traditions, from phrenology to PET scans and from Spinoza to Charles Taylor, What Makes Us Think? revolves around a central issue: the relation between the facts (or "what is") of science and the prescriptions (or "what ought to be") of ethics. Changeux and Ricoeur ask: Will neuroscientific knowledge influence our moral conduct? Is a naturally based ethics possible? Pursuing these questions, they attack key topics at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience: What are the relations between brain states and psychological experience? Between language and truth? Memory and culture? Behavior and action? What is a mental representation? How does a sign relate to what it signifies? How might subjective experience be constructed rather than discovered? And can biological or cultural evolution be considered progressive? Throughout, Changeux and Ricoeur provide unprecedented insight into what neuroscience can--and cannot--tell us about the nature of human experience.


Changeux and Ricoeur bring an unusual depth of engagement and breadth of knowledge to each other's subject. In doing so, they make two often hostile disciplines speak to one another in surprising and instructive ways--and speak with all the subtlety and passion of conversation at its very best.

About this title

About the Author

Jean-Pierre Changeux, Professor of Neurobiology at the College de France, is the author of Neuronal Man and, with Alain Connes, Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics (both Princeton). Paul Ricoeur is a hermeneutic philosopher and the author of many books, including Time and Narrative.

Reviews

The French literati love bringing two leading figures from what would appear to be disparate fields together and jointly publishing essays on a chosen topic. This generally provides some fascinating point/counterpoint, and this work falls into the camp of exemplary discussions that result from this process. Changeux, a giant in the field of neuroscience and professor at the College de France, has partnered with Ricoeur, a contemporary intellectual philosopher of magnum reputation. They offer an intriguing discussion on the function and nature of human thought. Morality, ethics, social norms, evolution, and peace are among the issues that are looked at from perspectives of cognitive neuroscience (how our brain's physiology functions) and logical philosophy (how our thought processes work). The central focus of these discussions is the relationship between scientific fact and ethical consciousness. Their intellectual meanderings take the discussion to many different places, including modern Israel, linguistic theory, religion, cognitive psychology, and history. These two amazing minds at work make for a fascinating look at the who, what, and how of thought. Michael Spinella
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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691009406
• ISBN 13: 9780691009407
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336