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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book I've read on the brain, December 29, 1999
Horgan leaves you open-mouthed at the breadth and depth of his reporting. From Prozac to psychoanalysis to PET scans, he puts all of mind science in place; and does it so deftly and entertainingly that you don't realize till later how much you have learned. He has made fewer waves with this book than with The End of Science, but if anything this one's even better. He is not the bad boy of science journalism (as he's been called lately) so much as the smart man --capable of handling any subject with grace, wit, and honesty, and appropriate levels of skepticism. Where he is skeptical he is judging scientists by their own standard: the evidence. My favorite chapter was his deconstruction of evolutionary psychology. I found myself less pessimistic than Horgan about the potential of neuroscience, but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the book. He writes with a point of view, which makes him interesting, but he doesn't abuse you with it.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Horgan's deficit thinking, May 8, 2000
Most of what Horgan says about mind science is, I think, correct. He is right that much of psychology isn't really moving toward a unified theory of the mind, and shows no signs that it really can get there. Horgan's solution to this problem is, he seems to suggest, that we should think of much of psychology as more akin to "philosophy and literary criticism" (his words)than to hard science. I think Horgan is right when he says this. But, the trouble I have is that he understands "philosophy" and litcrit in a superficial and condescending way- and therefore, psychology too, insofar as it is akin to these disciplines. He sees such disciplines as merely _less_than_ science. He defines them negatively, by what they _can't_ to, rather than what they can. For instance, he says that these disciplines, the humanities, are not empirical and don't have unified paradigms. So this is what they _don't_ have, but what about what they _do_ have and _can_ do, that science can't? I think the trouble here is that Horgan doesn't know an awful lot about the humanities. Horgan's offhand depiction of several philosophers (Kuhn, "French philosophers," etc.), for instance, is mostly amateurish, uncomprehending, and often not especially respectful. And in an encounter he depicts with some literary-oriented psychoanalysts, he quotes some of what they said and aggressively dismisses it as "obscure." If one looks at what he quotes to show this "obscurity," it turns out that the psychoanalysts were merely using the common diction of literary criticism discourse, which Horgan obviously does not understand. It is because of his lack of knowledge in these fields, I think, that Horgan really does not know what he is saying when he suggests that psychology is a lot like litcrit and philosophy. If he had a better sense of the special _kind_ of intellectual rigor and insightfulness that these disciplines have, Horgan might view them as equal, in their own way, to hard science. If this is the case, then if psychology is something like litcrit and philosophy instead of like physics, this is not a step down for psych, as Horgan implies, but merely a step sideways.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good antidote to the hype, December 22, 2003
This review is from: The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation (Paperback)
At a time when we are constantly bombarded with claims and counter claims about the mind in the media and the popular press, it is good to see someone finally rise above the hype and take a good critical look at the current state of Mind Science. Opening with a discussion of the mind body problem or as Horgan calls it the "explanatory gap" and the difficulties in constructing a single theory of the mind, Horgan leaves the reader wondering if in the final analysis, such a thing is even possible. While ultra critical, Horgan does not make the same mistakes as he did in his first book. He treats each argument fairly and reasonably. As one reviewer pointed out "Where he is skeptical he is judging scientists by their own standard: the evidence" In my view he is at his strongest when critiquing Bio-Psychiatry and especially the pseudo- science Evolutionary Psychology, which he rightly points out its inability to perform experiments, and the impossibility of objectively determining what is a cultural or innate trait. He likens this budding "Science" to the now fading psychoanalysis, which has interesting views on human nature, but whose theories can never really be verified. Finally, he tackles the old philosophical problem of consciousness, and highlights all the competing contradictory views on how to tackle the problem. Of course ultimately we may solve the problems that Horgan thinks are beyond our grasp, but until then, Horgan's Critical rationalism will do just fine.
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