![Beyond the Self: Conversations between Buddhism and Neuroscience (The MIT Press) by [Ricard, Matthieu, Singer, Wolf]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51UFfwWLpiL._SY346_.jpg)
I really liked this book. There should be more books like this, which bridge the gaps between points of view. One of the great things is they were very respectful of the other's point of view, even when they disagreed. Some books are weak, when the only thing they can claim possible are points of agreement. This one does a good job of expressing both points of view.
The only reason I gave it a 4 and and not a 5 is that I would like to see more points of view. I appreciate that this book was a lot of work by itself. But, there are even more ways to look at this. For example, toward the end of the book, when the authors disagreed about consciousness, it was obvious the reason for their disagreement was they were assuming different definitions of consciousness. I have read several books, lately, about the mind, and I can say there are many more definitions of consciousness than these two. It would be great to include others in the discussion: Hindu, zen, a couple members of Jewish/Christian/Muslim faith (one intellectual and one spiritual), a physicist (Michio Kaku has lots of good ideas), a psychologist, and a sociologist. Perhaps there could be a conference on consciousness. Hopefully, the atmosphere would be as constructive as this book.
As another example, I respect the one author's point of view, but I disagree with his conclusion about free will. Events need to be reproducible for science to study them. So, of course science is going to conclude that there is no free will, since the assumption of determinism is the starting point. Science is very useful (obviously), but I believe, just like we can't use a thermometer to measure pressure, we can't use science to measure free will. But, this is not a complaint, this is just the sort of discussions I would like to see more of.
- File Size: 788 KB
- Print Length: 294 pages
- Publisher: The MIT Press; 1 edition (October 27, 2017)
- Publication Date: October 27, 2017
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0771Z126T
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#383,073 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #358 in Neuroscience (Kindle Store)
- #397 in Consciousness & Thought
- #924 in Buddhism (Kindle Store)
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