The Wonder of The Human Person - Some Books to Ponder and to Read: Shorter Notes I

My copies of the two books reviewed here

What I love about books is the way they make me think and feel, the way, indeed, they expand both of these human attributes in me, forcing me to think and to feel more and more either in a wider or deeper sense, even if only second hand.  This post will not offer a review or several reviews but rather what I term "shorter notes" on some books I have found both enlightening and challenging. I also read for sheer escapism and enjoyment, but if you are a reader, you will realise that these particular sentiments are not ruled out if a book is challenging and makes you think.  

(i) Flourishing by Maureen Gaffney (Penguin Books, 2012).  This is an engaging book that is written in a lively and direct style.  One is engrossed in it from the first sentence, which shows the author's rootedness in experience and in the now: "On my desk as I write..." (p.ix). However, this is much more than a self-help book because it is backed up by references to and quotations from many scholarly researchers, scientists, psychologists and psychiatrists.  Even a cursory perusal of the extensive notes will indicate this - they run for thirty pages.  There is a deep philosophical core to this work and Dr Gaffney bases her very title on Aristotle's own word for happiness, namely "eudaimonia" which translates much better and more meaningfully as "flourishing" or "blooming" which Aristotle saw as the very goal of life (telos), i.e., another way of referring to the fullness of our wellbeing.   This book, then, is an attempt to outline how we can set about blooming.  I love the author's holistic and ecological approach to our personhood as human beings which she sees as possessing and expressing "the delicate psychological ecosystems in our selves, in our relationships... and [in] the communities where we live." ( p. x)  Chapter 5 entitled "Knowing who you really are" is especially good and therein she discusses (i) the unconscious self, (ii) our human temperaments, (iii) early childhood experiences, (iv) the conscious self, (v) our talents and gifts, (vi) personality, (vii) awareness - a topic very central to Eastern spirituality and Meditation as well as to modern psychotherapy, and (viii) the higher self or spiritual self.  All in all, I found this book an inspiring read in the Self-Help mode,  but also a solid read insofar as there is much research quoted to back up opinions.  Dr Gaffney is, it should be noted Adjunct Professor of Psychology at TCD.  See here for the review from the The Irish Independent. 

(ii) Descartes' Error by Professor Antonio Damasio (Penguin,2005).  If you are interested in what the brain is, how the mind relates to the brain, how the body relates to the brain; in consciousness and what it really means, this is the book for you.  Damasio is an internationally renowned neurologist who seeks to explain in clear prose where exactly the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician of the title went wrong in his conception of the relationship between mind and body.  Indeed, when I was at college lecturers in many of the social sciences constantly alluded in passing to what they termed "Cartesian dualism." This, of course, suited all manner of believers as the separation of mind and body nicely parallelled their separation of soul and body.  Damasio sets out in clear prose, with all of his contentions clearly scientifically based, why there can be no such separation of mind and body or soul and body.  Now, Damasio is no extreme reductionist - indeed, this is a well-written scholarly book with more than occasional references to Shakespeare, to music and to other riches of human culture.  It is obvious that his intention is not to reduce the human being to material entities but to show how firmly the mind builds on matter  He also rehabilitates the role of our emotions and feelings alongside more traditional cognitive reasoning in making our daily decisions.  He acknowledges the psychologist Daniel Goleman's great contribution to this area of study, too, in his seminal work Emotional Intelligence.  He blows asunder many myths, also, about the functioning of different brain areas, disabusing our minds of specific areas alone (that is 100%) being responsible for X, Y, or Z functioning.  While they may be responsible to a great extent, it appears many other parts have helping roles in the overall functioning of specific human abilities.  The whole thing is more complex than we might at first imagine.  However, I love his frankness and indeed his humble, Socratic declaration that the "text is an open-ended exploration rather than a catalogue of agreed facts.  I am considering hypotheses and empirical tests, not making affirmations of certainty." (p.86)

My copies of the books reviewed here

Damasio starts the book with a case history - the interesting case of the change in personality after a horrific injury to the brain of Phineas P. Gage (1826-1860).  This is a brilliant way to start the book and it pulls the reader right into the centre of the whole mystery of the human brain/mind/personhood or self!  He then proceeds by presenting other case histories to build up his arguments. Emotions and rationality are inextricably linked as is the brain/mind/personhood/self and the body.  Quite soon one is convinced, if indeed one did need convincing, that the two are inextricably linked and may, in fact, be one.  You will learn with ease, also, the various parts of the brain and through the asides about what leucotomies and lobotomies are.

As I'm interested in what the "self" may be, as no doubt you may be, I will finish with this interesting quotation from the book to whet your appetite:

.... but let me say at this point that the self is not the infamous homunculus, a little person inside our brain perceiving and thinking about the images the brain forms.  It is rather a perpetually recreated neurobiological state.  Years of justified attack on the homunculus concept have made many theorists fearful of the concept of self.  But the neural self need not be homuncular at all.  What should cause some fear actually is the idea of a selfless cognition.  [My italics] (p.100) 

Daniel Dennett has a good review of this book here. There is also a short lecture by Professor Antonio Damasio on the conscious mind on the TED website: here