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

Changeux, Jean–pierre

 
9780691009407: What Makes Us Think? – A Neuroscientist & A Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, & the Brain: A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain
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 an exchange between neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this study 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? Behaviour and action? What is mental representation? How does a sign relate to what it signifies? How might subjective experience be constructed rather than discovered? In asking these

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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.

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Publisher
Princeton University Press
Publication date
2000
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0691009406
ISBN 13 
9780691009407
Binding
Hardcover
Number of pages
346

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780691092850: What Makes Us Think?: A Neuroscientist And A Philosopher Argue About Ethics, Human Nature, And The Brain

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0691092850 ISBN 13:  9780691092850
Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2002
Softcover