The Brain and the Meaning of Life by Paul Thagard (PDF)

Description

How brain science answers the most intriguing questions about the meaning of lifeWhy is life worth living? What makes actions right or wrong? What is reality and how do we know it? The Brain and the Meaning of Life draws on research in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to answer some of the most pressing questions about life’s nature and value. Paul Thagard argues that evidence requires the abandonment of many traditional ideas about the soul, free will, and immortality, and shows how brain science matters for fundamental issues about reality, morality, and the meaning of life. The ongoing Brain Revolution reveals how love, work, and play provide good reasons for living.Defending the superiority of evidence-based reasoning over religious faith and philosophical thought experiments, Thagard argues that minds are brains and that reality is what science can discover. Brains come to know reality through a combination of perception and reasoning. Just as important, our brains evaluate aspects of reality through emotions that can produce both good and bad decisions. Our cognitive and emotional abilities allow us to understand reality, decide effectively, act morally, and pursue the vital needs of love, work, and play. Wisdom consists of knowing what matters, why it matters, and how to achieve it.The Brain and the Meaning of Life shows how brain science helps to answer questions about the nature of mind and reality, while alleviating anxiety about the difficulty of life in a vast universe. The book integrates decades of multidisciplinary research, but its clear explanations and humor make it accessible to the general reader.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Professor Thagard has done a fine job of bringing together various research to support a hypothesis that love, work, and play are the basic elements of meaning in life.Of course you still know little about meaning if you don’t study and understand how he supports his conclusion. This is where Mr. Thagard messes things up a little. Much of the book is a repudiation of philosophical theories. This content would be fine of course in an academic paper but I found it is distracting in this book. I have nothing against picking on philosophers who base their work on speculation but I would have preferred this effort to be in later chapters instead of sprinkled throughout the book. They keep diverting a reader’s attention from the well constructed flow.I have studied the human relationship to meaning for decades but especially in the past dozen years. Thagard’s hypothesis fits in nicely with what I’ve found if you take the definitions of love, play, and work liberally as he does. People can attach meaning to pretty much anything physical or non-physical. That they do that through love, work, and/or play is new to me but so far I’ve found the hypothesis works to explain what is happening in the real world – including religion.For an explanation of love, work, and play in a religious context think of “Protestant work ethic”, “Love one another”, and the numerous fun activities and songs hosted by most religious groups.Mr. Thagard is very clear about what issues are not yet supported by enough research. He doesn’t have all the answers. However, as many of us know, the gaps in knowledge are closing fast. It is difficult to see at this time that closing those gaps will make a material difference in Thagard’s conclusions. We seem to be close to game over.At the time of this review there is an extensive review of the book by an obvious theist. He’s upset that the religious concept of Free Will is under attack and that our concept of mind is actually within a physical brain. He looks to religion to explain what is now mostly explained by rational research. He also practices “religion of the gaps” – trying to use the remaining unanswered questions to justify his beliefs.I understand his frustration but really folks, we’ve been in this situation at least hundreds of times in the past 400 years of scientific reasoning and research methods and theist opinions consistently fail to explain the real world — including how non-theists have lots of meaning and morality in their lives. Thagard’s work covers all the bases to the extent of existing research. However, there are still a few gaps left in the research and theists try hard to use those gaps to discredit scientifically supported hypotheses.The theist reviewer believes that we need gods for morality. He has clearly missed out on the huge amount of research that supports another more compelling view that fits the real world. For example, he conveniently omits the results from dozens of research reports that some 96% of the prison population in the U.S. are now and were religious when they committed their crimes. While there is little evidence that religion causes crime (sorry atheists) there is no evidence to support that religion has morality benefits any greater than secular communities. This topic is discussed elsewhere in detail so I’ll avoid it here but Thagard’s work is supportive of that overwhelming evidence.My favorite analogy about our minds being material within brains is the simple case of dementia and brain injuries. As the brain deteriorates humans clearly lose parts of their minds. (Same with chemical imbalances.) So when we die and our brains do the ultimate deterioration why are we supposed to suddenly have whole minds again? Theists, there is a pattern here that is a big gap in your hypothesis.I’ll favor Thagard’s hypothesis unless a better explanation comes along – and that is also his view.

⭐The Brain and the Meaning of Life by Paul Thagard”The Brain and the Meaning of Life” is an ambitious book about answering some of the most important philosophical questions. Mr. Thagard makes use of research from philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to come up with evidence-based answers to such questions. This 292-page book is composed of the following 10 chapters: 1. We all Need Wisdom, 2. Evidence Beats Faith, 3. Minds Are Brains, 4. How Brains Know Reality, 5. How Brains Feel Emotions, 6. How Brains Decide, 7. Why Life is Worth Living, 8. Needs and Hopes, 9. Ethical Brains, and 10. Making Sense of It All.Positives:1. An accessible, well-written book with a touch of humor that tackles some of the most important philosophical questions, such as: What is reality? Why is life worth living? What is reality and how can we know it? What makes actions right or wrong?2. Great use of the most current scientific evidence and theories to answer the aforementioned profound questions.3. A very fair and reasonable approach throughout the book. The author does a wonderful job of conveying what we do know versus what remains to be known, in other words a sound scientific approach.4. An enlightening book indeed. Lucid arguments backed by sound scientific research and Mr. Thagard has the innate ability of pulling everything together in a coherent manner.5. Why evidence-based arguments are superior to faith-based arguments, an excellent chapter.6. Compelling defense of why “inference to best explanation” is the best approach to determine the best explanation.7. How science works.8. A sound materialist approach to the brain. The mind is what the brain does.9. Fascinating tidbits and facts throughout.10. There is no scientific evidence for the soul, “soul” get used to it.11. We admit enough to say state that conscious experience within the scope of causal explanation is still provisional but plausible. Science is indeed driven by doubt.12. Mind-brain identity hypothesis stands out.13. Inferences as neural processes.14. Brain functions in perception supports constructive realism over empiricism and idealism.15. Scientific theories as a more reliable guide to reality.16. Great quotes abound. “Wisdom without knowledge is empty, but knowledge without wisdom is blind.”17. The EMOCON (emotional consciousness) Model illustrated.18. The concepts of goals like you’ve never seen before.19. How decisions occur without free will. The Brain Revolution explored.20. The meaning of life…work, love and play.21. Psychological needs as biological needs.22. Interesting take on morality.23. How a naturalistic system of evidence-based philosophy is highly coherent with scientific information.24. Great notes and glossary.25. An extensive bibliography worthy of this excellent book.Negatives:1. Theists and some philosophers may take offense to the attacks on their views.2. The author does an excellent job of conveying his worldview in an accessible manner but let’s face it some concepts are complex no matter how you slice and will require further reading.In summary, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was a very satisfying and enlightening read. Mr. Thagard provides compelling arguments for his theories and along the way debunks inferior philosophies. If you are looking for a book that gives you the meaning in life in a reasoned manner this is clearly it. I can’t recommend this book enough and hoping that Mr. Thagard provides a follow up in the future when more evidence is known. Bravo!Recommendations: “Moral Landscape” by Sam Harris, “Human” by Michael S. Gazzaniga, “Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality” by Laurence Tancredi, “Supersense” by Bruce M. Hood, “The Third Basic Instinct…” by Alex S. Key and “The Myth of Free Will” by Cris Evatt.

⭐I got this book after reading the authors articles about Jordan Peterson. The book was far better than Peterson’s. I was looking struggling to understand why nihilism or the low expectations was not a sound direction for one’s life, and the book did provide good arguments against those positions.

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