Synopsis
Recent breakthroughs in neuroscience have revolutionized our understanding of the human mind and human cognition. But what implications do these new findings have for the place of reason--long considered the crowning human faculty that ensured transcendent purpose--in human life? This is the profoundly important question Donald Calne, a leading neurologist and clinician, addresses in Within Reason.
His conclusions are startling, disturbing, and of immense potential usefulness. Offering both a general explanation of the way the mind works and a compelling humanistic defense of the value of science and rationality, Calne shows that reason has no direct links to the brain's pathways of pleasure and satisfaction that motivate our behavior. Reason is simply a powerful tool put into the service of goals it cannot determine or change. Within Reason brilliantly and succinctly delineates how reason--through its deployment in all domains of human endeavor, from science to religion, from ethics, commerce, and government to art and music--has enabled mankind to achieve dominance over all other forms of life without providing any specifiable content, beyond survival, to the meaning of existence. Echoing the great religious and philosophical traditions but written from the perspective of neuroscience, Within Reason offers a new and fascinating picture of the role of rationality in both evolution and daily consciousness.
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Review
"A brilliant dissection of reason and its essential limitations--a neurologist's Critique of Reason."--Oliver Sacks
From the Back Cover
It has long been a central conviction of Western humanistic thought that reason is the most godlike of human traits, and that it makes us unique among animals. Because of this we have believed that reason is the centerpiece of our decision-making process. Yet if reason directs what we do, why is human behavior so often violent, irrational, and disastrous?
In Within Reason, leading neurologist Donald B. Calne investigates the phenomenon of rationality from an astonishingly wide array of scientific, sociological, and philosophical perspectives. In the process he finds that although reason evolved as a crucial tool for human survival, it is an aspect of the mind and brain that has no inherent moral or spiritual qualities and one whose relationship to our thoughts and actions may not be as central as we want to believe. Learned, lucid, and always illuminating, Within Reason brings the latest developments in the science of mind together with some of the most enduring questions of Western thought.
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Within Reason Rationality and Human Behavior
Seller: Isaiah Thomas Books & Prints, Inc., Cotuit, MA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 2 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Near fine in near fine dj but for some spots top edge and fore edge finger smudges.; 9.3 X 6.0 X 1.2 inches; 332 pages. Seller Inventory # 0814H661956