The Undiscovered Mind by John Horgan BOOKS
Haught, John F.
Can we understand understanding? to many experts at the time, were well Nor do we really know how to...
...The information he rialist instincts, however, render his dead end, perhaps even a final defeat, provides is not without value, but the own mysterianism rather weak by for human inquiry...
...The same tragic resignation For fort her information: religious anthropology...
...others have attempted to discredit In 1991 philosopher Daniel Dennett's Freud as a consummate fraud, Horgan John F. Hau9ht grandiose treatise, Consciousness Ex- is rather soft in his critique of psychoplained (which, by the way, does not ex- analysis, since in his view nothing else en years ago the U.S...
...Rather it is just that came through in The End of SciWrite: 33S South Avenue, AVeston, NIA 02493.3699 a sad and sober fact...
...Empowering Through Faith- our resource for cial or psychological datum and ex- Family Ministry is the only quarterly journalministry with families...
...mind...
...rich Darwinian accounts of our men- Family Ministry: Find out for tal habits can legitimately claim to be...
...to believe that the mind is an impene- Gardner, Horgan advises professional Neuroscience and other trable mystery are only frustrating the practitioners of the "talking cure" to sitbranches of cognitive science, it seemed progress of science, he said...
...viewing actual patients, however, confor men in In The Undiscovered Mind, Horgan's tent to generalize from sheets of stathe age own investigation of the various "mind tistics and interviews with experts that range of sciences" leads him to the same mys- the entire spectrum of therapies lives 30 to 60...
...InterestingI he° Free Pit,- 525, 3 ~~ this provocative book that the human ly, at a time when Frederick Crews and mind will forever remain a mystery...
...cal factors that quietly "cause" all of empty...
...mental freedom is probably illusory, is God after Darwin (Westview...
...His most recent book alize it...
...Horgan steers clear of interformation can take...
...Box 908, Louisville, KY 40201-0908, gether again...
...We simply do not, ence (a book that sought to douse the Call: 781-899-5;00 Lax:7SI-S99-9057 and indeed cannot, understand very notion that the horizon of scientific E-mail: popejohna,:iplink.net much about the mind...
...In fact, placebos...
...If wisdom we can never really understand the mind, how can we hope to build one erstan artificially...
...For Horgan, "the undisvious medical improvements that have of Saint Augustine, for whom the covered mind" is not an exhilarating occurred in the care of the mentally ill, mind's elusiveness to intellectual mas- doorway to infinite mystery, as it has he seems content to focus almost ex- tery is indicative of our deeply spiri- been for the truly great philosophers clusively on the failures of therapy to tual nature...
...plain it in Darwinian terms, but it cannot experimentally show that this explanation is better than any others...
...There are, after all, both strong for there must be unspecifiable physiFor Horgan the glass is always half- and weak versions of mysterianism...
...counselor, social wisdom Its devotees seem inordinately confi- worker or lay into the dent that Darwin provides the deep- church leader, relationship est and most fundamental explanation keeping up with between faith, of our mental characteristics...
...Instead of highlighting the ob- An example of the strong variety is that our decisions...
...Last year, however, even so Horgan's breezy but gripping book rationalist a thinker as Colin McGinn is destined to irritate many neuroscigrimly concluded, in The Mysterious entists now working feverishly to unFlame, that the mind and brain will al- derstand the brain, as well as the cogJ ways remain inherently unknowable, nitive scientists attempting to compreXXM out of bounds to scientific elucidation...
...Now gan contends, efforts to heal the psyche Mind that the Decade of the Brain has ended, have scarcely worked any better than How the Human Brain Defies the mystery of mind remains...
...For In spite of its author's insistence Horgan, as for McGinn, this confession that he is not trying to depress his of the limits of science is no reason to readers, The Undiscovered Mind hardcelebrate...
...From psychoanalysis to Prozac, HorThe Undiscovered crets of human consciousness...
...People who continue gestion of Jerome Frank and Howard as the Decade of the Brain...
...Subscribe today to Family Ministry: cise...
...couldn't...
...I hend the "mystery" of mind...
...Horgan's implicitly mate- of the past...
...Like neuroscientists, researchers in evolutionary psychology and artificial intelligence are both bumping up against the Humpty Dumpty dilemma...
...Appro- family life and congregations, priately, Horgan questions just how ministry is community important...
...terianism that McGinn reluctantly em- on overblown claims of effectiveness...
...Here, however, his sobriety seems more Gain justifiable...
...The fact that mind evades the universe is not a place of promise, complete objectification is not a signal John F. Haught is professor of theology at and he wants to make sure that we re- of its irreducibility to mechanics...
...Its generPOPE JOHN XXIII standing of mind is not a victory for al mood is melancholic rather than NATIONAL SEMINARY the soul or an implicit sanctioning of hopeful...
...If he is pessimistic about the results of therapy, Horgan is no more excited about the prospects of cognitive science...
...Phone: (888) 890-7865, Fax: (502) 635-3244, Website: www.fmef.org, Email: family@fmef.or Just how mysterious, then, is the Commonweal 2 3 March 24, 2000...
...Apparent- uate their discipline not in science, but ly Dennett had not read G. E. Pugh's in the field of rhetoric, the art of perremark to the effect that if the brain suasion...
...In this setting they will not were simple enough for us to under- have to defend their practice against the stand it, we would be so simple that we usual charge of being unscientific...
...Citing psychiatrist Arthur Replication, Medication, and John Horgan, a former writer for Sci- Shapiro, he seems to agree that the Explanation entific American and author of the con- placebo effect may be the primary inJohn Horgan troversial The End of Science, argues in gredient in psychotherapy...
...Our Georgetown University...
...It can take almost any kind of so- evangelical traditions in Christianity...
...to many experts at the time, were well Nor do we really know how to heal on the way toward unraveling the se- it...
...research extends endlessly ahead) Commonweal 2 2 March 24, 2000 takes over here once again...
...At the suggress designated the 1990s all "mysterians...
...In the field of artificial intelligence, for example, even Marvin Minsky and other pioneers are now con- ~an J s on fessing that earlier dreams about thinking machines were too enthusiastic...
...Family Ministry Empowering Through Faith They can break the mind into pieces, For more information, contact: Family Ministry, but they have no idea how to put it to- Louisville Seminary, P.O...
...Empowering yourself what Evolutionary psychology turns out to Through Faith is a many others be "a strangely inconsequential exer- publication reflecting ecumenical and have endorsed...
...Con- plain consciousness), declared war on seems to work much better...
...and family...
...Especially significant are Horgan's discussion and evaluation of the new field of evolutionary psychology, an offshoot of E. O. Wilson's sociobiology...
...MoreNational maintain," he wrote, "that we need a over, it will be shocking to the many Seminars qualitative leap in our understanding patients who will testify that psychiaffers of mind and brain, but I also hold that try or psychotherapy has restored them priestly this is not a leap our intellectual legs to life...
...The lacuna in our under- ly sparkles with optimism...
...Evolutionary psychology attempts to explain all of the features and functions of the mind as results of natural If you're a pastor, that offers selection for reproductive fitness that educator, hands-on culminated in hunters and gatherers...
...braces and that Dennett deplores...
...11 reader is forewarned that, for Horgan, comparison...
...Rather it is just one more live up to its hype...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 6
