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This book is about how we make choices. Drawing together evidence from 21st century chemistry to Victorian politics, enlightenment philosophy, Roman drama and beyond, it is a compelling hunt for the nature of free will.Psychiatrist Chris Nunn elegantly explores the revolutions in medicine, genetics, bioethics and neuroscience spurred by Julien de la Mettrie's 300-year-old tract Man the Machine. He finds that though formerly fruitful, this mechanistic view of human experience has now brought neuroscientists and philosophers to an impasse. He therefore proposes a powerful replacement metaphor for the workings of the human brain - 'man the story' - and demonstrates how this original approach could reconcile the results of cutting-edge brain-imaging with our intuitive understanding of decision making, responsibility and determinism.
This book is about how we make choices. Drawing together evidence from 21st century chemistry to Victorian politics, enlightenment philosophy, Roman drama and beyond, it is a compelling hunt for the nature of free will.Psychiatrist Chris Nunn elegantly explores the revolutions in medicine, genetics, bioethics and neuroscience spurred by Julien de la Mettrie's 300-year-old tract Man the Machine. He finds that though formerly fruitful, this mechanistic view of human experience has now brought neuroscientists and philosophers to an impasse. He therefore proposes a powerful replacement metaphor for the workings of the human brain - 'man the story' - and demonstrates how this original approach could reconcile the results of cutting-edge brain-imaging with our intuitive understanding of decision making, responsibility and determinism.
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