The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism
by Karl R. Popper, John C. Eccles
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The problem of the relation between our bodies and our minds, and espe cially of the link between brain structures and processes on the one hand and mental dispositions and events on the other is an exceedingly difficult one. Without pretending to be able to foresee future developments, both authors of this book think it improbable that the problem will ever be solved, in the sense that we shall really understand this relation. We think that no more can be expected than to make a little show more progress here or there. We have written this book in the hope that we have been able to do so. We are conscious of the fact that what we have done is very conjectur al and very modest. We are aware of our fallibility; yet we believe in the intrinsic value of every human effort to deepen our understanding of our selves and of the world we live in. We believe in humanism: in human rationality, in human science, and in other human achievements, however fallible they are. We are unimpressed by the recurrent intellectual fashions that belittle science and the other great human achievements. An additional motive for writing this book is that we both feel that the debunking of man has gone far enough - even too far. It is said that we had to learn from Copernicus and Darwin that man's place in the universe is not so exalted or so exclusive as man once thought. That may well be. show lessTags
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My absolute highligh of this book is the conclusion of the chapter P6 summary on page 210 by Karl Popper "... With the emergence of World3, selection need no longer be violent: we can eliminate false theories by non-violent criticism. Non-violent cultural evolution is not just a utopian dream; it is, rather, a possible result of the emergence of mind through natural selection."
Non si finisce mai di leggere questi tre volumi ...
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122+ Works 11,098 Members
Although he writes widely in philosophy, Sir Karl Raimund Popper is best known for his thesis that an empirical statement is meaningless unless conditions can be specified that could show it to be false. He was born and educated in Vienna, where he was associated with, although not actually a member of, the Vienna Circle. Two years after the show more German publication of his Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935), he left Austria for New Zealand, where he was senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury. In 1945 he moved to England and began a distinguished career at the London School of Economics and Political Science. According to Popper, there is no "method of discovery" in science. His view holds that science advances by brilliant but unpredictable conjectures that then stand up well against attempts to refute them. This view was roundly criticized by more dogmatic positivists, on the one hand, and by Feyerabend and Kuhn, on the other. In 1945 he published The Open Society and Its Enemies, which condemns Plato, Georg Hegel, and Karl Marx as progenitors of totalitarianism and opponents of freedom. The scholarship that underpins this book remains controversial. Popper's later works continue his interest in philosophy of science and also develop themes in epistemology and philosophy of mind. He is particularly critical of historicism, which he regards as an attitude that fosters a deplorable tendency toward deterministic thinking in the social sciences. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
40+ Works 653 Members
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism
- Epigraph
- Each waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, in comedy, farce or tragedy by a dramatis persona, the `self', and so it will be until the curtain drops.
C. S. Sherrington, 1947.
Each waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, in comedy, farce or tragedy by a dramatis persona, the `self', and so it will be until the curtain drops.
C. S. Sherrington, 1947.
Only human beings guide their beha... (show all)viour by a knowledge of what happened before they were born and a preconception of what may happen after they are dead: thus only human beings find their way by a light that illumines more than the patch of ground they stand on.
Peter B. Medawar and Jean S. Medawar, 1977. - Dedication
- To our wives
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