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Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain Review

Perhaps I shouldn't have read this book. I am a neuroscientist, and clearly this is meant for a lay audience, however I often enjoy such books for their concise synthesis of research and the freedom they give the author to speculate. Unfortunately it became clear quickly that this would not be such a book - p.19 announces that the author is from the Malcolm Gladwell school of nonfiction "Why was Topsy the elephant electrocuted by Thomas Edison in 1919? ... is there a real Mel Gibson? ... why do strippers make more money at certain times of month?" Ask intriguing questions, link them with vague explanations, file them under a catchy one-word title, and voila NY Times bestseller. While I have little doubt that this book will do well commercially and be enjoyed by many, I cannot recommend it to anyone with a serious interest in neuroscience.
While chapter two is a solid introduction to perception as inference, it is downhill from there. It becomes clear that Eagleman is not interested in any systematic review of the unconscious factors that influence our decisions, but is merely interested in presenting flashy examples. This by itself wouldn't be so objectionable, if he had actually come up with interesting and novel examples, instead of simply reciting old standards and cribbing from other authors. Eagleman has borrowed so much of his material that V.S. Ramachandran should demand royalties. However, Eagleman apparently hasn't read Ramachandran carefully enough, as he references his paper "Why do gentlemen prefer blondes?", apparently unaware that the paper was satirical. How embarrassing.
Eagleman attempts to go beyond the flashy examples in Chapter 5, declaring that the brain is a "team of rivals." This reference to D.K. Goodwin's book about Lincoln is both unfortunate and vague. It is vague because Eagleman never makes it clear what the 'rivals' are. What neural circuits are competing? What are their respective computations? It is unfortunate because it just isn't a good analogy for the brain. If we stick with the simple rational-emotional dichotomy, the goal of 'rationality' is not to rival emotion. Emotion forms the basis for all rational computation - without emotion there is no goal. While it is cliche, Eagleman's second analogy to a corporation (with consciousness as CEO) seems a far better fit than a 'team of rivals'.
Chapter 6 is a rather sophomoric look at the legal implications of brain research. Forty self-important pages can be summarized by saying that Eagleman believes that the legal system should focus on rehabilitation. Eagleman speculates that future brain science will tell us how 'modifiable' a brain's circuits are, suggesting that 'prefrontal workout' could be used to rehabilitate certain transgressors - those who are hopeless would be 'warehoused'. Even with 'warehousing' of the incurable, Eagleman's view is fundamentally naive. He completely ignores the role of punishment as a deterrent. Stephen Pinker's take on this topic in 'The Blank Slate' is far more balanced and thoughtful.
The book ends with Eagleman offering the familiar refrain that consciousness is an unspecified emergent property, and then declaring himself agnostic on deeper questions. It's a disappointing ending to a disappointing book. Eagleman's material is for the most part derivative and cliched, and his attempts at synthesis are muddled and vague.

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37% Off Discounts: Buy Cheap Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? Review

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Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do Review

This book will not satisfy the elite of hair-splitting moral philosophers, but to my mind it is the best book I have ever seen explaining moral philosophy to neophytes. The examples come mostly from contemporary American social life and many are well-known in the literature. But many were new to me, and included some of the most morally conflictual issues I have ever encountered. I just cannot imagine a better way to present the content of modern moral philosophy to the world.
Michael Sandel is a quite famous political philosopher with a reputation for extreme adherence to a particular brand of community-oriented virtue theory that is critical of the two major traditions in moral philosophy---utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Peter Singer) and deontology (Immanuel Kant, John Rawls). However, the reader will likely not discover this fact until the very end of the book, so even-handed and appreciative is Sandel of the alternative approaches. Indeed, the book is filled with the tension of a World Cup match, where the top players in the world are paraded before us in all their splendor, and where it is difficult to call any one a looser. This attitude contrasts sharply with the standard behavior of professional philosophers, who have hissy-fits when confronted with arguments with which they disagree (Sandel is capable of this as well, of course, but not in this elegant volume).
The most important thing the student learns from this book is that morality is for real, and leading a moral life is the highest goal to which we can aspire. I learned moral philosophy in an era dominated by the sort of analytical philosophy according to which moral statements are meaningless utterances, and moral behavior is irrational and constricting. At its best, I was taught that moral principles were an individual's private property, and were about as important as one's musical or artistic taste. For Sandel, morality is not an accoutrement of the genteel life, but is the source of all meaning in life, and he conveys this message to the reader without an ounce of preachiness or self-righteousness.
In his previous writings, Sandel has been a major critic of John Rawls's theory of justice, which has been the centerpiece of liberal democratic political philosophy for almost forty years. Rawls' embraces a Kantian ethic that extends the Categorical Imperative (do unto others...) in a way relevant to social policy and political philosophy. According to Rawls, we must erect social institutions using principles that we would individually be willing to accept if we were behind a "veil of ignorance" that prevented us from knowing what position we would hold in the resulting social order. He suggests two major principles. The first is the lexical priority of liberty, meaning that no social order has the right to constrain freedom in the name of some type of social engineering. The second is the principle that society should be organized so that the well-being of least well off is maximized. This leads to a radical egalitarianism in which the question of the justice of the distribution of wealth and income is the major moral issue in society. In particular, it leads to a hyper-individualism in which the moral principles of individuals is of no importance in their claim to a "just share" of the material wealth of society, and individuals are worthy of respect whatever they happen to choose as a way of life, provided they leave room for others to pursue their individual goals. Sandel rightly rejects this political philosophy on the grounds that by favoring "rights" over "the good," we necessarily degrade political democracy and republican virtues.
Sandel's alternative is to embrace a form of virtue ethics according to which the moral is what would be enacted by the virtuous individual, and we can tell what is virtuous by inspecting the character of human nature and the embeddedness of individuals in a close fabric of social life. The virtuous individual will "flourish" through acting in according with his or her highest nature, and immorality is a form of self-destruction brought on through ignorance or laziness.
The main thing missing from this book is an appreciation for the science of human morality. Humans make morality in the same sense that they make food, babies, art, music, and war. Sandel does not appear to realize that theories of morality should explain moral behavior, much as linguistics attempts to explain human verbal communication. Philosophers appear to have the idea that the philosophical "experts" have no more reason to study people's actual moral beliefs than physicists have to study folk-physics. This is a serious error, which leads philosophers to seek the "one true theory" from which all moral truths can be deduced. There is no "one true theory." All of the major branches of moral philosophy are represented in the everyday moralizing of people. Obligation, consideration of consequences, a sense of virtue, and even visceral feelings of cleanliness and propriety are all involved in how people make moral choices.
Because Sandel does not treat moral behavior as worthy of scientific study, he misses one major point about human morality: the strong underlying unity of moral sensibility across all societies and covering most social issues. The motivating force of Sandel's book is moral conflict, either in the form of an individual having to make choices that necessarily involve opting for the lesser evil (for instance, should soldiers kill an innocent shepherd to save the lives of nineteen patriotic soldiers, or should a living fetus be sacrificed to satisfy the preferences of the importuned mother), when in fact most major moral choices concern good versus evil, and what is considered good and evil is pretty much the same the world over. Everywhere, people cherish honesty, loyalty, hard-work, bravery, considerateness, trustworthiness, and charity. Similarly, everywhere people prefer insiders to outsiders, and take pleasure in hurting those who violate personal integrity or social rules. It is these moral values that have made humanity the imposing presence it has upon the planet, and if we are to survive into the future, it is these basic moral values, which are universal from small tribes of hunter-gathers to the vast populations of advanced technological society, that will provide the energy for the tasks that lie ahead of us.

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41% Off Discounts: Purchase Cheap Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet Review

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Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet Review

It was the best of books, it was--not the worst of books, not by a long shot, but incredibly annoying in places.
This is a serious effort at collecting in one place the current state of the science of dog behavior. Bradshaw discusses the evidence we have for how and when dogs evolved from wolves, as well as what dogs' close relationship to wolves does and doesn't mean for their behavior and needs in human households. For the last century or so, much training and dog management advice has been based on the idea that wolf packs are competitive, internally violent groups, dominated by the fiercest, most powerful male, or possibly the fiercest, most powerful male and female--the "alphas." Since, the reasoning goes, "dogs are wolves," dog owners need to establish themselves as "alpha" and dominate their dogs, lest the dogs seize control of the household and become problems and even threats.
Bradshaw explains in clear and understandable terms why every piece of this argument is wrong.
The studies that showed wolf packs as violent groupings dominated by the strongest were done with artificial, captive wolf packs--wolves who were not related to each other and had no way to leave the group if they weren't happy with. They had no choice but to work out Who's In Charge Here, by any means necessary. Natural wolf packs in the wild have since been studied extensively, and they are, in contrast, peaceful, mostly harmonious family groups. The "alpha pair" are in fact the parents of the younger wolves. Depending on local conditions, offspring from past litters may stick around for a year or three, helping to raise their younger siblings before eventually heading off to find mates and start their own packs. Where plentiful large game is available, a stable, long-lasting pack may include not only several years' worth of offspring, but siblings of one or both of the mated pair--aunts and uncles helping to hunt large game and feed and care for the pups.
So wolves aren't what we think they are. But then, neither are dogs what we're sometimes told to think they are--and we know this, from our own observations of our own dogs. Most dogs who have had reasonably normal puppy experiences are extremely friendly and social, both with humans and with other dogs. Wolves, as harmonious and cooperative as they are within their own family groups, do not share dogs' interest in being friendly and social with either humans, or other wolves. Contact with wolves outside the family pack doesn't always descend into violence, but it's always an occasion of conflict, with the resident group warning off the intruders. If our domestic pet dogs shared the behavioral traits of wolves to the extent that "dominance-based" training tells us they do, there would be no dog parks. We wouldn't have the idea of dog parks; it would engender not visions of happy dogs playing, but of conflict between dogs or groups of dogs of different households. Just the fact that dogs form close social bonds with humans is a clue they're not like wolves behaviorally; wolves are incredibly wary of humans, and even where an individual human has formed a relationship with an individual wolf, wolves don't have dogs' inclination to trust our judgment, regard us as sources of information, or respond to human body language.
Bradshaw goes further, and points out that today's wolves are the descendants of several hundred years of relentless human hunting and territorial encroachment; they've been effectively selected for distrust and wariness of humans in a way that wouldn't have been true of the original wolf protodogs who first started following humans to exploit our leftovers, and then gradually joined our human families and their skills for our skills to the greater prosperity of both species.
The wolves our dogs evolved from don't exist anymore.
The book further discusses how easy it is to get dogs to focus on humans. A dog who has no contact with humans as a puppy will normally be quite wary of people and is unlikely to be successful as a pet, but even minimal positive contact with humans at any point between the ages of three and eight weeks of age will set the puppy up to be ready to bond with humans and learn to be a good pet. How much contact, and at exactly what age, will affect how easy and smooth it is, but any positive contact with humans during that period will give the dog at least the minimal tools it needs to live with humans.
So, that's the good stuff. There's a lot of it, I've barely scratched the surface, and you really do want to read the book and get all of it, with Bradshaw's much fuller explanation, references to more sources, etc.
But.
You knew there was a "but" coming, right?
Bradshaw says dogs are becoming less common as pets in the cities, being pushed out to suburban and rural areas. Maybe in the UK, I don't know, but not here in the US, where instead there is a shift to smaller dogs and/or lower-energy dogs, more likely to be happy and successful in cities--while the larger and/or higher-energy dogs remain extremely popular with people who have either more room, or a lifestyle that enables them to give those dogs the exercise and stimulation they need, regardless of geographic location. He says cats have become more than dogs as pets in the US--this is completely wrong. There are more cats than dogs kept as pets in the US--but more households have dogs than cats. The discrepancy in numbers is due to most cat owners having at least two cats, and often more, while dog owners are far more likely to have only one at a time--and this is often true even in households that have both. There's no evidence that dogs are falling in popularity as pets--not with the huge increase in numbers of dogs, numbers of households with dogs, and percentage of households with dogs over the last thirty years.
He also has a great deal to say about purebred, or, as he terms it, "pedigree" dog breeding, and he says it over and over. He talks about excessive inbreeding, kennel club regulations that prevent out-crossing to deal with mistakes that have made genetic diseases common in some breeds, the loss of genetic diversity within each breed, and emphasis on extremes of type due to show standards, leading to what are in effect major deformities in some breeds that make them less than viable.
These are all real concerns, some of them more so in some breeds than others, and yet he makes a complete hash of his discussion of it. Bradshaw places all the responsibility for the current problems on show breeders (who are not without fault), and completely misses the degree to which all of these problems are worse in puppy mills (puppy farms, commercial puppy factories, pick your terminology.) Many (not all) show breeders study pedigrees and do genetic testing where tests are available, to minimize the chance of producing puppies affected by the known genetic problems of their breed. Puppy mills don't; as long as a female can whelp litters of commercially viable size, they'll breed her. Many (not all) show breeders think seriously about the Coefficient of Inbreeding (COI) and out-cross to different lines to the extent practical within their breeds. Puppy mills don't; they'll happily breed a bitch to her full brother if it happens to be convenient, and it often is. Many (not all) show breeders follow up on the pups they place in pet households as well as show and performance households, and include the long-term health of those puppies in their considerations of future breeding decisions. Puppy mills don't.
Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, a breed he specifically mentions as being descended from just six individuals and having serious genetic problems as a result (I think he's wrong; I believe it's four individuals), are a breed in deep trouble, no question. These sweet, loving, perfect pets are at severe risk of developing heart disease, syringomyelia, or both, even when they come from the best breeders. I honestly believe that this is a breed that's doomed unless planned, controlled out-crossing is introduced to fix their compromised genetic heritage.
But 100% of the breeders who care about this, and who are doing their best within the available rules and tools to save this wonderful breed, are the dread "show breeders." Backyard breeders, even the best, even the ones that love their dogs and really are breeding wonderful pets--an undertaking that gets too little respect in a world in which most dog owners desire dogs as pets and not as working companions--don't have the knowledge to do this. And the puppy millers, as well as most of the backyard breeders, simply don't care and aren't going to cut into their own profits by worrying about it.
Bradshaw doesn't state clearly enough what I believe the real problem is: between the late 1860s when much of dog breeding in the West became divorced from working considerations with the corresponding excellent empirical grasp of genetics, and the 1960s with the beginnings of a real scientific understanding of genetics, the combination of dogs shows judging by a written conformation standard and the insidious effects of "eugenics" leading to a belief that being "purebred" was a good thing in itself, caused many (not all, by any means) breeds to go seriously astray genetically. And once the problems are established, they are hard to undo--especially with the strong commitment to purebred breeding, now largely divorced from the pernicious philosophy that originally produced it, blocking planned out-crosses to other breeds or mixes to eliminate or dilute the genetic problem while preserving the essential character of the breed. And while Bradshaw rails against "pedigree breeding," at no point does he mention the most convincing proof that we don't have...Read more›

Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You A Better Friend to Your Pet Overview

Dogs have been mankind's faithful companions for tens of thousands of years, yet today they are regularly treated as either pack-following wolves or furry humans. The truth is, dogs are neither--and our misunderstanding has put them in serious crisis.
What dogs really need is a spokesperson, someone who will assert their specific needs. Renowned anthrozoologist Dr. John Bradshaw has made a career of studying human-animal interactions, and in Dog Sense he uses the latest scientific research to show how humans can live in harmony with--not just dominion over-- their four-legged friends. From explaining why positive reinforcement is a more effective (and less damaging) way to control dogs' behavior than punishment to demonstrating the importance of weighing a dog's unique personality against stereotypes about its breed, Bradshaw offers extraordinary insight into the question of how we really ought to treat our dogs.

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41% Off Discounts: Buy Cheap On China Review

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On China Review

Prior to the publication of this book the definitive resource on China was Jonathan Spence's "In Search of Modern China". Spence the Yale Professor, is still indispensible to a modern understanding of this remarkable country. Now there is a second more up to date source and that is Henry Kissinger. The former Secretary of State who is now 88 years fortunately has taken the time to put together this incredible piece of work that only he could have created. The book demonstrates the necessity of having lived a very long productive life and generating wisdom capable of distilling his understanding of a country down to a 530 page volume of work. It is as good as any of his previous works (13 with this one) and for my money I now put this book in Kissinger's top three, along with WHITE HOUSE YEARS and DIPLOMACY. First the MECHANICS of the BookIf you are going to read the hard copy as opposed to digital, you are in for a treat. The font is beautiful, and the paper used to print the volume is delicious. I say this because if you are a heavy reader; you really appreciate turning the pages of beautifully textured pages. I annotate all of my books, writing in margins, in the back on blank pages and just about everywhere, and I love writing on beautiful page that take the ink nicely. This book was crafted professionally as good as it gets. The ORGANIZATION of On ChinaThe Secretary has made 40 trips to China in his lifetime, enough that he should be the Honorary Ambassador to the country. He is thoroughly infused in the history of China, and he certainly does give you the history. There are 18 chapters plus an epilogue spread over 531 pages. There are 36 pages of footnotes and it is obvious that the Secretary had considerable organizational help with the footnotes which is to be expected.
The first three chapters or 91 pages are devoted to the nation's history and Kissinger gets it right. I have made many trips to China, but I still have problems with the language. When you read any book on China, you will have problems with pronunciation. What I do is quickly scan the book writing down 50 or a 100 names or terms I can't pronounce, and then head for the first Chinese restaurant in town, and ask for help with the words. People love to help, especially when you are taking an interest in their culture and language. The guts of the book begins on page 91 or Chapter 4 which is Mao's Continuous Revolution. This chapter is superb and superbly written. If you study American China relations, the question that is always stipulated is whether or not America lost China in 1949. Kissinger correctly reminds us that China might never have been ours to lose, so we asking the wrong question. Mao always believed that the Confucian order had for thousands of years kept China a weak China. Confucius preached HARMONY, and Mao believed that progress could only come from brutal confrontations both in China and with outside adversaries for China to advance. Mao also believed that these confrontations would happen naturally, but if they did not, he was not beyond creating confrontations even if they had to be within the Communist party to kept progress going, as he understood progress.

Chapter 6 which deals with China Confronts Both Superpowers is another section that only Kissinger could have written. It is here that China confronts the Soviet Union creating the Sino-Soviet split, and the United States with the Taiwan Strait Crisis. The chapter is riveting, and will affect and change your understanding of history. MY ANALYSIS The book is indispensible. You cannot understand China and modern Asia without having this book under your belt. One would have to be foolish to visit China and not read this book first to truly benefit from such a trip. Mao was famous for the Long March, and this book is a long journey for the reader but it is very rewarding. The Secretary takes us through the Road to Reconciliation in Chapter 8, and then the first encounters with Nixon, himself and the Chinese leadership in Chapter 9. It is a fascinating portrayal of power meeting power head to head, and the respect that even enemies can hold for each other. It is now generally accepted that only Nixon the hardened right winger could have opened the door to China and brought the American people along with him, because he Nixon was viewed as tough. Perhaps in a decade or two, Harvard will accept what most historians have already accepted.

In Chapter 11 we witness the End of the Mao Era. Zhou Enlai falls and Deng's first return to power begins. Kissinger loves writing about Deng and calls him the indestructible Deng throughout chapter 12. Keep in mind that it was Deng who opened up modern China and began the reforms that were necessary for China to assert itself years later internationally and economically. For those readers that know very little of China, this book is a whirlwind tour of a country fast gaining hegemony over Asia. You need to read Chapter 13 on the Third Viet Nam to understand how China is capable of dealing with its neighbors. Had we handled Viet Nam this way, the outcome and history would have been different. CONCLUSION:Henry Kissinger ON CHINA is destined to become a best seller and in the process will greatly help an America that knows very little about China except for newspapers, to understand not just the history of this vital country, but its future and the nexus of that future with America's future. No one can ignore China, so the sooner we as Americans gain the understanding that we need to make intelligent decisions, the better off we will all be. If you have an interest in China whatsoever, run to read this book, and do not put it down until you are finished with it. Good luck and thank you for reading this review. Richard C. Stoyeck ASSIDE: I will share something extraordinary with you. When you read a book like this, you will have a better understanding of China than 98% of the people living in China and 95% of the Chinese people living in America. I am still shocked when I meet Chinese people in this country young and old who have next to no understanding of Chinese history prior to Mao. They do not know the name Sun Yat-sen, or even Zhou Enlai, and forget about the Cultural Revolution unless they lived through it. Even the tragedy of Tiananmen Square is fast fading from memory.

It reminds me of German history in the post Hitler period. Anybody in Germany who was educated post 1950 has very little to no understanding of the Hitler period. It is simply glossed over as a dark period in German history; the teachers do not know what to say. Just amazing.

On China Overview

In this sweeping and insightful history, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book-length to a country he has known intimately for decades, and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. Drawing on historical records as well as his conversations with Chinese leaders over the past forty years, Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy, and negotiation throughout its history, and reflects on the consequences for the global balance of power in the 21st century. Since no other country can claim a more powerful link to its ancient past and classical principles, any attempt to understand China's future world role must begin with an appreciation of its long history. For centuries, China rarely encountered other societies of comparable size and sophistication; it was the "Middle Kingdom," treating the peoples on its periphery as vassal states. At the same time, Chinese statesmen-facing threats of invasion from without, and the contests of competing factions within-developed a canon of strategic thought that prized the virtues of subtlety, patience, and indirection over feats of martial prowess. In On China, Kissinger examines key episodes in Chinese foreign policy from the classical era to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the decades since the rise of Mao Zedong.He illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such pivotal events as the initial encounters between China and modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, Richard Nixon's historic trip to Beijing, and three crises in the Taiwan Straits.Drawing on his extensive personal experience with four generation of Chinese leaders, he brings to life towering figures such as Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, revealing how their different visions have shaped China's modern destiny. With his singular vantage on U.S.-China relations, Kissinger traces the evolution of this fraught but crucial relationship over the past 60 years, following its dramatic course from estrangement to strategic partnership to economic interdependence, and toward an uncertain future.With a final chapter on the emerging superpower's 21st-century world role, On China provides an intimate historical perspective on Chinese foreign affairs from one of the premier statesmen of the 20th century.

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