The Delusions of Certainty
eBook - ePub

The Delusions of Certainty

  1. 208 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The Delusions of Certainty

About this book

The Delusions of Certainty is a unique book by an extraordinary author. Siri Hustvedt is a notable novelist, art scholar, and a philosopher of science. In this memorable and immensely enjoyable volume, Hustvedt rises above the exhausted debate over the two cultures, to demonstrate not just the possibility but also the advantages of combining the approaches of the arts, humanities, and sciences to illuminate a key aspect of the human condition: the mind-body problem.”
—Antonio Damasio, bestselling author of Descartes’ Error and Self Comes to Mind

“Siri Hustvedt proves her membership in the highest rank of neuroscientists and philosophers who probe the nature of thought and the workings of consciousness. A novelist and a student of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Hustvedt can ask questions others cannot ask about imagination, identity, epistemology, gendered power, and mortality. Her authoritative knowledge and her courage to challenge the status quo guide the reader to fresh epiphanies about what counts as human nature. The work is, in the end, a work of freedom.”
—Rita Charon, Columbia University

The Delusions of Certainty is the best book on the mind-body problem I have ever read. Perhaps only a great novelist and essayist can address what neuroscientists and philosophers fail to question. Siri Hustvedt takes the reader on an inspiring journey into highly relevant and often unanswered questions about what it means to be human.”
—Vittorio Gallese, University of Parma

Prizewinning novelist, feminist, and scholar Siri Hustvedt turns her brilliant and critical eye toward the metaphysical issues of neuropsychology in this lauded, standalone volume. Originally published in her “canonical” (Publishers Weekly) and “absorbing” (Kirkus Reviews) collection A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, The Delusions of Certainty exposes how the age-old, unresolved mind-body problem has shaped—and often distorted and confused—contemporary thought in neuroscience, psychiatry, genetics, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary psychology.

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Yes, you can access The Delusions of Certainty by Siri Hustvedt in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Mind & Body in Philosophy. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Coming In and Going Out
  3. Dressing Gowns, Triangles, Machines, Mind in Matter, and Giants
  4. Received Ideas and M
  5. What Are We? Nature/Nurture: Hard and Soft
  6. Brains: Hard or Soft?
  7. Nature/Nurture: Minds and Pop Culture
  8. Heritability and Twin Tales
  9. An Excursion into the Lives of Johnny and Jimmy and a Scientist Named Myrtle McGraw
  10. Number Certainties?
  11. New and Old Adventures at Harvard, Testosterone, Placebo, False Pregnancies, and Wishes and Fears Coming True
  12. A Moment for Frog Sacrifice and Aristotle’s Biology
  13. Women Can’t Do Physics
  14. A Marriage of Minds: Evolutionary Psychology
  15. Hardening and Softening Darwin?
  16. Survival Stories
  17. Mind as Literal Computer?
  18. The Wet Brain
  19. Unnatural Wonders
  20. Neurones and Psychons
  21. GOFAI vs. Know-How
  22. Machines, Emotions, and Bodies
  23. An Aside on Niels Bohr and Søren Kierkegaard
  24. Wet or Dry?
  25. Phantasy Land in Its Sincere and Ironic Modes
  26. The Thinking Body
  27. Empathy, Imagination, and Babies
  28. Memory, Placebo, and Weird Body Symbolism
  29. Work and Love
  30. Coda
  31. Notes
  32. Copyright