Cognitive Books - Page 5

Consciousness Explained (Penguin Science)

Daniel C. Dennett

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 100 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Playing With the Idea of Consciousness 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Dennett can always be relied on for clever analogies, provocative themes and interesting thought experiments. For a philosopher, he writes colorfully and well. In the end, though, his book leaves the unavoidable impression that he enjoys the game of thinking a little too much. This, together with his insistence on evaluating first-person, subjective experience using the objective, third-person standards of science, gets in the way of a truly serious and open-minded search for answers.

Although he acknowledges that consciousness is a mystery, Dennett deliberately avoids material that might help illuminate that mystery. He fails to consider the crucial role of emotion, intuition and other non-quantifiable factors, preferring instead to "try to explain every puzzling feature of human consciousness within the framework of contemporary physical science; at no point will I make an appeal to inexplicable or unknown forces, substances or organic powers." Just how comfortably he settles in is clear from the fact that a full 281 pages go by before he finally says, "...at last it is time to grasp the nettle, and confront consciousness itself, the whole marvelous mystery..."

But in spite of raising the reader's expectations, however belatedly, he simply goes on to equate the brain and mind with computer hardware and software, claiming that "Anyone or anything that has such a virtual machine as its control system is conscious in the fullest sense..."

Dennett, in falling into the same cyber-trap as Richard Dawkins and other materialists, yields to the temptation to model the exquisitely subtle and multi-faceted human mind after one of mankind's far more limited mechanical creations. Having set the bar so low, Dennett makes it impossible for his book to shed any real light on what consciousness is or how it came to be.

Editorial Review:

Consciousness separates us from other animals and machines--or does it? Can consciousness be scientifically reduced to chemical and mechanical processes? If so, where do morality, love, unhappiness, and joy fit in? Now the author of Brainstorms and coauthor of The Mind's I proposes an original model of consciousness based on new scientific fact and theory. 51 drawings.

The Mind Map Book: How to Use Radiant Thinking to Maximize Your Brain's Untapped Potential

Tony Buzan, Barry Buzan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 86 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Must have 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Instant improvement on the way you can retain and process informaiton. Get his book on speed reading as well. The return on your investment is incalculable.

Great book So glad I purchased it 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

All of the books I have read by Tony Buzan
are great. I have never been dissapointed
by any of his books. So glad he has shared
his wonderful knowledge in book form for us
to learn.
Great practical info. So glad I purchased it.

Everything you need to get started with Mind Maps 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you were going to buy one book on mind maps, this is the book. It presents the basics of creating a mind map and then goes on to show different ways and situations in which you can use them. There are also some really nice examples of mind maps to get your mind going. You don't need to be an artist. I went through the Radiant Learning workshop that the Buzan Organization teaches to certify mind map instructors back in 2000. I've used mind maps with coaching clients, in workshops and in corporate consulting. You can get what you need from this book to get the benefits of mind maps right now for a really low price. The key is to just follow the basics described in the book and go from there. If you want, you can learn more about mind maps and other visual thinking/creating tools. But this is the one to start with because you'll establish a strong foundation in the basics. Once you read this book, you'll be able to judge if any other book or product has anything new to offer. You can't beat this book for the price and the skills it offers. Mind maps will help you end writer's block, solve problems, create new ideas and more. It's really fun to use with kids too. Enjoy, you'll be doing yourself a big favor!

Editorial Review:

The potential of the human mind is absolutely phenomenal, and Tony Buzan is one of the world's leading experts on how people can maximize their brainpower. Now, in his most comprehensive book yet on the topic, Buzan reveals exciting new ways to improve one's memory, concentration, creativity, ability to learn, and more.

How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life

Thomas Gilovich

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Not the Full Monty. 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 8 people found this review helpful.

My main interest in this subject lies in a search for answers to the question of why perfectly sane and intelligent people put faith in God above reasoning. Why do so many choose to believe so strongly with so little evidence? Unfortunately Thomas Gilovich absolutely refuses to cast light on religious delusions, but mainly states that theists and atheist "both need to develop the habit of thinking more broadly." Not helpful at all and sort of a faux pas to include this lame comment in the book.

Never the less, the book is a good and thorough introduction to the subject of our penchant for faulty reasoning, but also somewhat dry and repetitive. I wasn't exactly rolling on the floor with laughter, which might be too much to ask; but the many examples and anecdotes could be presented with greater vigour without harming the seriousness and validity of the study.

May I recommend: "Don't Believe Everything You Think: The 6 Basic Mistakes We Make in Thinking" by Thomas E. Kida, which is very similar in content and reference a lot of the same sources, but is also more playful and entertaining.

Editorial Review:

When can we trust what we believe - that "teams and players have winning streaks", that "flattery works", or that "the more people who agree, the more likely they are to be right" - and when are such beliefs suspect? Thomas Gilovich offers a guide to the fallacy of the obvious in everyday life. Illustrating his points with examples, and supporting them with the latest research findings, he documents the cognitive, social and motivational processes that distort our thoughts, beliefs, judgements and decisions. In a rapidly changing world, the biases and stereotypes that help us process an overload of complex information inevitably distort what we would like to believe is reality. Awareness of our propensity to make these systematic errors, Gilovich argues, is the first step to more effective analysis and action.

Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth

Andrew Newberg, Mark Robert Waldman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

WHY DO YOU BELIEVE THE THINGS YOU BELIEVE? Do you remember events differently from how they really happened? Where do your superstitions come from? How do morals evolve? Why are some people religious and others nonreligious? Everyone has thoughts and questions like these, and now Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman expose, for the first time, how our complex views emerge from the neural activities of the brain. Bridging science, psychology, and religion, they demonstrate, in simple terminology, how the brain perceives reality and transforms it into an extraordinary range of personal, ethical, and creative premises that we use to build meaning, value, spirituality, and truth into our lives. When you come to understand this remarkable process, it will change forever the way you look at the world and yourself.

Supported by groundbreaking research, including brain scans of people as they pray, meditate, and even speak in tongues, Newberg and Waldman propose a new model for how deep convictions emerge and influence our lives. You will even glimpse how the mind of an atheist works when contemplating God. Using personal stories, moral paradoxes, and optical illusions, the authors demonstrate how our brains construct our fondest assumptions about reality, offering recommendations for exercising your most important "muscle" in order to develop a more life-affirming, flexible range of attitudes.

You'll discover how to:

• Recognize when your beliefs are altered by others
• Guard against mental traps and prejudicial thinking
• Distinguish between destructive and constructive beliefs
• Cultivate spiritual and ethical ideals

Ultimately, we must always return to our beliefs. From the ordinary to the extraordinary, they give meaning to the mysteries of life, providing us with our individual uniqueness and the ability to fill our lives with joy. Most important, though, they give us inspiration and hope, beacons to guide us through the light and dark corners of the soul.

How to Get Ideas

Jack Foster

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 55 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Thinking the Einstein way 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

"Albert Einstein said his best ideas came to him while he was shaving," Jack Foster writes in "How to Get Ideas" (2nd ed.). When I read that line, what could I do? I put the book down for a moment and went to shave.

That's about the only time I stopped reading though, and you won't be able to put it down either. For boosting creativity, this book is a lifesaver.

Foster's advice is simple -- have fun, think like a child again, open your mind to new possibilities -- but not necessarily obvious. Most of us do the same old things and think in the same old ways. Foster aims to help us spot these unhelpful patterns, then break out with easy-to-follow tips and stimulating exercises.

And anecdotes. Foster draws on decades of experience as a top creative hand in major advertising agencies, where he encountered guys and gals driven by curiosity -- people who found out how much a ten-gallon hat will hold (three-quarters of a gallon) and how many times per day an African elephant will defecate (16). Illustrating how to solve a problem by stepping around it, Foster tells the story of the woman who solved the slow-elevator problem in her building -- by mounting mirrors in the lobby. (How did she do it? See P. 134.)

You'll discover how to overcome the fears that keep you from thinking creatively ... easy ways to gather information ... combining unrelated facts for new ideas ... the five steps for getting great new ideas ... and how to put them to work for YOU.

You'll finish reading "How to Get Ideas" in an hour or two. But you'll benefit from its advice for the rest of your life.

Editorial Review:

In How to Get Ideas, Jack Foster draws on three decades of experience as an advertising writer and creative director to take the mystery and anxiety out of getting ideas. Describing eight ways to condition your mind to produce ideas and five subsequent steps for creating and implementing ideas on command, he makes it easy, fun, and understandable.

Trust Your Vibes

Sonia Choquette

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Wanting more 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I fell upon Sonia's works and ordered this and another of her books together. I loved them both and will now read whatever else she has written. She is very down to earth, easy to read and gives practical, do-able tasks for anyone wanting to fine tune their six sense. For those of us who have lived with "premonitions" or good "instincts" it was nice to have someone help us feel more comfortable with our inner voice.

a very good book of this genre 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

this is a really good book for anybody - not only for those who want to find their intuition. Ms. Choquette very nicely sums up how to percieve the world. So, control freaks of the world read this book and see what you are missing. :)

Editorial Review:

This book reveals the secrets you need to awaken your intuitive voice. Sharing real-life stories of those whove learned to tap into their sixth sense, you see first-hand how people have drastically changed and improved their lives. Be motivated to activate your own intuitive channel and experience the support it brings to all aspects of your life, bringing you peace of mind and an innate sense of security, confidence and courage.

The Logic Of Failure: Recognizing And Avoiding Error In Complex Situations

Dietrich Dorner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Over-promised and under-delivered 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

The book got my juices flowing in the first chapter, especially with the reference to human interaction with dynamic systems and the tendency to "oversteer". I wrote my doctoral dissertation over 30 years ago on just such a phenomenon as applied to the broiler industry (yes, chickens), which behaves as an underdamped servomechanism. (I'm an engineer).

However the early promise of the book didn't bloom as I'd hoped. Rather than use real world examples, all of the author's principles are drawn from simulated experiments. As a doctoral student I was subjected to many simulated business game situations, and while they can be made complex to third and fourth generation consequences, life is more complex than that (think The Tipping Point and Jim Burke's The Pinball Effect).

The effort to draw principles in the last chapter suffered two defects: there are too many of them and they are shallowly explained in terms of real-world usefulness.

While I think the book is worth reading, it over-promised and under-delivered. I'd recommend speed reading it for high level content and avoid getting bogged down in the simulations. I highlight as I read, and the highlighting became less and less as the book wore on. That's the best evidence I have on the value of a book to me when I finish reading it and review my highlighting and notes.

A much more practical book (for me) was Managing the Unexpected by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe.

Editorial Review:

Why do we make mistakes? Are there certain errors common to failure, whether in a complex enterprise or daily life? In this truly indispensable book, Dietrich Dörner identifies what he calls the “logic of failure”—certain tendencies in our patterns of thought that, while appropriate to an older, simpler world, prove disastrous for the complex world we live in now. Working with imaginative and often hilarious computer simulations, he analyzes the roots of catastrophe, showing city planners in the very act of creating gridlock and disaster, or public health authorities setting the scene for starvation. The Logic of Failure is a compass for intelligent planning and decision-making that can sharpen the skills of managers, policymakers and everyone involved in the daily challenge of getting from point A to point B.

Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration

Keith Sawyer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Leveraging the Genius of the Group 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

The path to becoming more innovative often requires debunking a number of myths or commonly held beliefs. For instance, the idea that a lone genius is often responsible for an invention or innovation. In fact, most innovations or inventions spring from the combination of the work of many people. Edison did not create the lightbulb alone, nor did Al Gore invent the internet by himself.

In his book, Group Genius, Keith Sawyer looks at the power of Group Genius, the impact of collaboration on creativity and innovation. Rather than rely on a single genius, we should be harnessing the power and knowledge of many people in our organizations. Through a number of interesting examples, Sawyer demonstrates how the power of collaboration increases the capability of the firm to generate more ideas and better ideas, and enhances the culture of innovation.

Sawyer starts off the book with a few characteristics of creative teams:

1. Innovation emerges over time
2. Successful collaborative teams practice deep listening
3. Team members build on their collaborators' ideas
4. The meaning of an idea becomes clear over time
5. Reframing the problem or solving a different problem
6. Recognizing that innovation is inefficient
7. Innovation emerges from the bottom up

Although he presents these ideas early on, they don't receive enough exposition throughout the book. These concepts alone, however, are enough to chew on for quite some time.

Sawyer divides the book into three sections, looking at how teams collaborate and how corporations collaborate. Yes, I know that's two sections. The third section is a little less defined and really looks at how we as individuals think and the mental models we use which provide frameworks which can limit our thinking and creativity.

In the first section, on team collaboration, Sawyer demonstrates the power of improvisation as a method to improve problem solving and innovation. His argument is that too many rules and too much planning tend to choke out creativity and innovative problem solving. He provides several examples where groups were faced with significant challenges and had to improvise solutions on the spot. While improvisation is often inefficient, it can lead to better ideas and better results in some cases. Sawyer also describes "flow" - a concept that originates from research by Csikszentmihalyi. Flow is a heightened state of consciousness that occurs when:

* People are working on tasks that match their skills
* There's a clear goal
* There's constant feedback as to progress and attainment of the goal
* The person is free to fully engage in the task

Research shows that "flow" is essential to creativity. Sawyer moves on to describe a number of conditions that need to exist for a team to achieve flow, using examples from sports teams to improv to major corporations.

In the second section, the Collaborative Mind, Sawyer looks at successful innovators and people who were highly creative and seeks to determine how they got that way, and how "regular" people like you and me can become more creative. In this section there are a number of exercises to help you start reframing problems and step away from your usual perspectives and context.

In the third section of the book, Sawyer looks at using the concepts of collaboration and group genius within an organization - how to organize for improved collaboration and innovation, how to build collaborative webs and how to collaborate with customers. In this section he offers some very useful ideas and approaches to use within any team or organization.

Group Genius is an excellent book, because it combines theory with practice and practical guidelines. Too often, books about innovation and creativity are written from a purely academic viewpoint, with a lot of research and theory described, but not much information on how to put the information into practice, or from a very tactical perspective, suggesting a few tips or techniques or offering up some simple exercises. Sawyer does a good job of demonstrating the thinking behind his suggestions, but also presenting a number of actions that a team or corporation can take to become more innovative by tapping the collaborative genius of a team or the company. He uses a lot of examples, from improv actors to large corporations, but always within context. The section on the Collaborative Mind is interesting but really more focused on the individual and his or her creative capability, while the sections on team and organizational collaboration are focused on how your teams, groups and business units can harness the power of collaboration to achieve more creativity, better problem solving and generate better ideas.

Some books about creativity are read once and filed on the shelf for occasional reference. Group Genius is a book that will be so dog-eared and so heavily used you may need more than one copy for your own use, and a number of copies for your co-workers as well. This is a book that can be used by an individual, a team or a business unit, with relevance for all of them. This book is my first introduction to Keith Sawyer's work, and I look forward to reading his other books after reading this one. I highly recommend it to anyone who is searching for ways to improve the collaboration, creativity or innovative capability of a team or company.

Reposted from an original review on the Innovate on Purpose Blog.

Editorial Review:

Creativity has long been thought to be an individual gift, best pursued alone; schools, organizations, and whole industries are built on this idea. But what if the most common beliefs about how creativity works are wrong? Group Genius tears down some of the most popular myths about creativity, revealing that creativity is always collaborative-even when you’re alone. Sharing the results of his own acclaimed research on jazz groups, theater ensembles, and conversation analysis, Keith Sawyer shows us how to be more creative in collaborative group settings, how to change organizational dynamics for the better, and how to tap into our own reserves of creativity.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Routledge Classics)

C.G. Jung

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Insightful Analytical Psychology 5 out of 5 stars.
37 of 37 people found this review helpful.

A very insightful and meaningful book, 11 intriguing essays in 244 pages. Jung is a deeper thinker, and I think not reductive like Freud and Adler tended to be. He makes no claim to dogmatism or absolutes. Jung really hits on the psyche and transcends the borders of rational intelligence into areas of the unconscious expressions in symbolism and images.

I am going to argue against another reviewer here that gave this book 4 stars as being outdated. When I look at the present collective societal structure and current cultural pattern apart from the minority of advanced individuals, I can see the postmodern man has regressed far from the modern man of the 1930's in search of a soul. Of course there as been advances individually, but on a collective level; fundamentalism, religious literalism, nationalism, patriotism and one-sided thinking This has grown in major proportions as opposed to the other way around and it is far more serious than most even realize and patterns after historical events of very similiar nature.

The first essay on dream-analysis hits on the idea that dreams are very hard to interpret and suggests that understanding the circumstances and conditions of the conscious life is significant in relation to the dreams of the unconscious life.

On the problems of psychotherapy, Jung relates four stages of analytical psychology, the confessional, explanation, education and transformation

"The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form - an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other." p. 61

The essay on the personality types is short, non-exhaustive and briefly relates Jung's ideas of the introvert, the extrovert and the 4 basic types consisting of those persons who are thinkers, feelers, sensory and intuitive.

In his essay on the stages of life, Jung ventures beyond childhood into early adulthood and the expansion of the self into sexual desires and masculine and feminine traits and how after somewhere in the 40's there begins a contraction of the self where men may acquire more feminine traits and women more masculine. In the second half of life less is needed to educate his conscious will but more aim towards the inner being, until old age where one leaves the rational self and retreats into the psyche as children yet in a different sense.

Jung acknowledges the validity of Freud and Adler and their valuable contributions, yet Jung sees Freud's sexual reduction to all neurosis as limiting, as well as Adler's will to power over inferiority as the sole cause. Both views have proven themselves as valid in many cases, yet Jung finds there is far much more levels in what he calls "value intensities," which underlie many complexes.

Jung also briefly goes into the archaic man's interpretation of all chance events having external meanings and causes, or as causal occurrences and the contrast of the modern man's ability to see the majority of chance and unexplainable events as the human imagination, as the perception of the human. Also the same ability of assumptions in the archaic man, can be seen in the modern who uses science as the foundation over the supernatural.

Jung's essay on psychology and literature is my favorite essay. It hits on something I both think of and am affected by almost every day. I found this entirely meaningful and very much profound. In this he writes of two types of writers; those that explain all they write of and those that have visions where their writing is obscure and needs the psychologist to read into. It is those visionaries that are the most inspiring. Here there exists those as in The Shepherd of Hermas, in Dante, in the second part of Faust, in Nietzsche's Dionysian exuberance, in Wagner's Nihelungenriing, in Spitteler's Olympischer Fruhling, in the poetry of William Blake, in the lpnerotomachia of the monk Francesco Colonna, and in Jacob Boehme's philosophic and poetic stammerings.

Jung speaks of the human intuition that points to things that are unknown and hidden, and by our very nature are secret and that throughout human history this unfathomable primordial source of creative experience been expressed in images, as in the sun-wheel, in attempting to point to this. The artist and poet will resort to mythology and images which only appear to occur in dreams, cases of insanity, narcotic states and eclipses of consciousness.

"A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is never unequivocal. A dream never says; "you ought," or "this is the truth." It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and we must draw our own conclusions." p. 171

I really can't even begin to touch on all the vital, significant and soul inspiring information that is loaded in the pages of this book and I think as I try I am taking away from what's written far better than what I'll ever write. I recommend this book.

Editorial Review:

Modern Man in Search of a Soul is the perfect introduction to the theories and concepts of one of the most original and influential religious thinkers of the twentieth century. Lively and insightful, it covers all of his most significant themes, including man's need for a God and the mechanics of dream analysis. One of his most famous books, it perfectly captures the feelings of confusion that many sense today. Generation X might be a recent concept, but Jung spotted its forerunner over half a century ago. For anyone seeking meaning in todays world, Modern Man in Search of a Soul is a must.

What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition: Revised and Updated Edition

James Paul Gee

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Good for research, not so much for general reading. 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

First of all, this book is not written as a general public book, it is written much more in the vein of a college graduate's analysis. Heavy discussion of the effects of video games on the semiotic domain underpin the analysis. That being said, this book is a good analysis of the effects of video games on those that play them.

If you want a general public analysis of the effects of entertainment (and video games) on people, check out Steven Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good For You." This book is a deeper analysis of part of Steven Johnson's book, so it might be best as a follow-up purchase.

My biggest complaint about James Paul Gee's book is more with the copy editor and publisher. There are so many poorly written or incorrectly written sentences that should have been caught and corrected. It really affects the perceptions about the book's research.

Editorial Review:

James Paul Gee begins his classic book with "I want to talk about video games--yes, even violent video games--and say some positive things about them." With this simple but explosive statement, one of America's most well-respected educators looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. In this revised edition, new games like World of WarCraft and Half Life 2 are evaluated and theories of cognitive development are expanded. Gee looks at major cognitive activities including how individuals develop a sense of identity, how we grasp meaning, how we evaluate and follow a command, pick a role model, and perceive the world.