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Bite back against soundbites
In Defense of the Constitution
Power and Political Discourse
Thought-provoking and insightful, disarming and sad, inspiring and hopeful.
At Last,A Careful Analysis

The Assault on Reason
Al Gore
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1594201226
Release Date: 2007-05-22

Amazon.com

The first question many people ask when hearing of a new book from Al Gore is, "Is it about the environment?" The answer is yes, but it's not (or, rather, not only) the kind of environment he wrote about in Earth in the Balance and of course painted such a vivid picture of in his Oscar-winning documentary (and companion book), An Inconvenient Truth. It's the political environment he's concerned about in The Assault on Reason: the way we debate and decide on the critical issues of the day. In an account that balances theoretical discussion of the foundations of democracy with a lacerating critique of the Bush administration, Gore argues that the marketplace of reasoned debate our country was founded on is being endangered by a variety of allied forces: the use of fear and the misuse of faith, the distractions of our entertainment culture, and the concentrations of power in the national media and the executive branch. In his essay and answers to our questions below, he introduces the crisis he sees, as well as the opportunity for its solution he envisions in the open forums of the Internet.

A Message from Al Gore to Amazon.com Readers

I've dedicated my book, The Assault on Reason, to my father, Senator Albert Gore Sr., the bravest politician I've ever known. In the 1970 mid-term elections, President Richard Nixon relied on a campaign of fear to consolidate his power. I was in the military at the time, on my way to Vietnam as an army journalist, and I watched as my father was accused of being unpatriotic because he was steadfast in his opposition to the War--and as he was labeled an atheist because he dared to oppose a constitutional amendment to foster government-sponsored prayer in the public schools. The 1970 campaign is now regarded by political historians as a watershed, marking a sharp decline in the tone of our national discourse--a decline that has only worsened in recent years as fear has become a more powerful political tool than trust, public consumption of entertainment has dramatically surpassed that of serious news, and blind faith has proven more potent than truth.

We are at a pivotal moment in American democracy. The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, has reached levels that were previously unimaginable. It's too easy and too partisan to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes.

Reasoned, focused discourse is vital to our democracy to ensure a well-informed citizenry. But this is difficult in an environment in which we are experiencing a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time--from the O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson trials to Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith.

Never has it been more vital for us to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from the climate crisis to the war in Iraq to the deficits and health and social welfare. Today, reason is under assault by forces using sophisticated techniques such as propaganda, psychology, and electronic mass media. Yet, democracy's advocates are beginning to use their own sophisticated techniques: the Internet, online organizing, blogs, and wikis. Although the challenges we face are great, I am more confident than ever before that democracy will prevail and that the American people are rising to the challenge of reinvigorating self-government. It is my great hope that those who read my book will choose to become part of a new movement to rekindle the true spirit of America.

Questions for Al Gore

Amazon.com:Of all I've read and seen on climate change, I don't think anything has had quite the impact on me that those vivid maps of shrinking coastlines did in An Inconvenient Truth. You've spent years trying to communicate the threat of climate change and you've learned how to use compelling images to tell that story, but in this book you're very wary of the power of visual images to overwhelm reason with fear. How do you spur people to action in a crisis like this without using fear?

Gore: I often open the slideshow by talking about the "climate crisis." The English meaning of the word "crisis" conveys alarm, but the Chinese and Japanese expressions use two characters together: the first means danger, but the second means opportunity. The animations do help to convey some of that sense of danger--but the opportunities are enormous. We are beginning to see companies taking advantage of the new markets that are emerging as they innovate and put to market the technologies that we need to solve this crisis. Some have become ubiquitous, like the hybrid electric engine and compact fluorescent light bulb. There are thousands of opportunities like this all around us if governments will show the type of bold leadership that we need--and work with industry to exploit these opportunities.

Amazon.com: You describe two problems with television culture: it's a top-down system in which, as you say, "Individuals receive, but they cannot send," and its physiological vividness allows it to bypass our reason. The user-created communities that seem so promising on the Internet would seem to solve the first problem, but what about the second?

Gore: There are a number of barriers for individuals who want to communicate over TV. The major networks won't give average Americans a voice, and it is virtually impossible to start a channel. One solution, that I have worked on with my partner, Joel Hyatt, is the creation of Current TV, where viewers can submit content over the Internet to air on the channel.

With regards to the Internet, anyone with access to a computer and broadband can create a website or blog and post content. They can send information into the public forum. Of course, we need to continue to work to bridge the digital divide, to ensure that we expand the access of people to the Internet, but the threshold for entry is much lower than that of television.

Amazon.com: You're the chairman of Current TV, the interactive cable channel aimed at young people. Can you talk about the challenges of constructing a platform where the kind of substantive dialogue you are looking for can take place?

Gore: One of the things I talk about in the book is infotainment--the "well-amused" audience that is bombarded with the latest programming about O.J. Simpson, or JonBenet Ramsey, or Anna Nicole Smith. What we are trying to do, in part, is to provide a public forum for viewers to submit content about issues of concern to them. And they have, by the thousands, on issues from the war in Iraq to the environment to education and others. I am continually amazed by both the quality of the submissions and the breadth and depth of the subject matter.

Amazon.com: You have a chapter on the importance of checks and balances in government (in a sense, that's what the whole book is about), and we're seeing the effect that active oversight from Congress is having right now. For most of your eight years in office, you and Bill Clinton had to work with a Republican Congress. I'm sure that at times (say, 1998) that had its frustrations, but do you think it was valuable to have that balance, or did it prevent you from doing what you came into office to do?

Gore: Checks and balances are vital to the functioning of our system of government. Of course it can have its frustrations, but the Founders intended that we have a system whereby no one branch has too much control over the others. Ultimately, it is up to voters to decide the control of Congress and the White House and then for elected officials to work to serve the public interest and to try to implement policies that serve the country. These are core values that are at the heart of who we are as a nation.

Amazon.com: I wanted to ask about the Office of the Vice President. I think it's safe to say that the last two vice presidents, you and Dick Cheney, have been the most powerful and influential in our history. Why do you think that is?

Gore: I think the answer is very different in the two administrations, but in a world that is truly globalized, with a broader information ecology, with challenges ranging from a more complex system of international issues ranging from the climate crisis to asymmetric attacks, it is not a surprise that a President might choose to draw upon more advice from the office of the vice president than in the past. This is a trend that I would expect to continue under future presidents, as the range of the demands on the presidency will not diminish over time.

Book Description

A visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degradation of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason

At the time George W. Bush ordered American forces to invade Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Voters in Ohio, when asked by pollsters to list what stuck in their minds about the campaign, most frequently named two Bush television ads that played to fears of terrorism.

We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Related to this and of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest in the process by which the truth is ascertained, the tenets of fact-based reasoning-first among them an embrace of open inquiry in which unexpected and even inconvenient facts can lead to unexpected conclusions.

How did we get here? How much damage has been done to the functioning of our democracy and its role as steward of our security? Never has there been a worse time for us to lose the capacity to face the reality of our long-term challenges, from national security to the economy, from issues of health and social welfare to the environment. As The Assault on Reason shows us, we have precious little time to waste.

Gore's larger goal in this book is to explain how the public sphere itself has evolved into a place hospitable to reason's enemies, to make us more aware of the forces at work on our own minds, and to lead us to an understanding of what we can do, individually and collectively, to restore the rule of reason and safeguard our future. Drawing on a life's work in politics as well as on the work of experts across a broad range of disciplines, Al Gore has written a farsighted and powerful manifesto for clear thinking.

Customer Reviews:

Bite back against soundbites.......2007-07-01

In his latest book, Al Gore continues getting it right. Freed from the burdens of running for or being in public office, he's accurately and openly commenting on the state of American public discourse.

The verdict: America has more technology at our disposal. But, the increased communication has also come with an decreased number of active voices and opinions. Citizens ironically disconnected from their governments and uninformed about the decisions affecting our own lives.

A strength of this book, is that while it critiques Bush (which is almost too easy now) and provides current evidence of the administration's Constitutional abuses, it also lays the blame at the American people ourselves. The current problem we are in actually is institutional, transcending a particular administration and/or party.

Debate has degenerated into attack and any attempt to examine the issues is portrayed as wavering or lacking principles. Then, the winner of such contests (and the election) becomes the person not with the more effective idea for the public good, but the person who was capable of launching the nastiest attack against their opponent(s). The moving tribute to his father which is included in the introduction this work is entirely appropriate because he was defeated in 1970 through these tactics, a Republican party eager to win the 'solid south' whipped up racial fears and Gore Sr.'s opposition to the Vietnam War.

Providing diagnosis and remedies, the book is not completely perfect. Gore is a little too eager to entrust experts in fixing government. I realize this is a hallmark of bureaucracy and people who have served in it. But that trust could also be a recipe which could backfire upon itself if those experts happen to be in a presidential administration such as our current one.

In Defense of the Constitution.......2007-07-01

This is Al Gore's follow-up to "An Inconvenient Truth". This time he broadens his reach beyond environmental issues to the recent attacks on American democracy and the Constitution.

Much of the book is an analysis of how the Bush administration has set aside the Constitution by ignoring the separation of Church and State and the separation of powers. Deprivation of civil liberties, torture of prisoners, putting the fortunes of fat cat contributors and energy industry allies ahead of the people and the environment, all of these areas are explored. One of the most shocking abuses is the position of Bush that whatever he decides is legal, no matter what. He enforces this by writing opt-outs whenever he has to sign a law he doesn't like. No matter that there is no provision in the Constitution for the president to ignore or qualify a law.

But the bigger picture is that Al Gore believes the existence of an informed citizenry is being eroded in many ways, most especially by the one-way tendencies of television, which has replaced the printed word as the primary source of news in the United States. Moreover, the recent trend towards greater and greater concentration of broadcast media means that what would have been the topic of debate a few decades ago has been replaced by superficial celebrity coverage. (The recent Paris Hilton jail affair came too late for this book, but illustrates Gore's point perfectly.)

Al Gore really was an early supporter of the "Information Super Highway" and he sees the Internet as redressing many of the problems of television and the dominance of 30 second commercials (and the need to raise money for them) in shaping opinion. But the Net isn't there yet, Gore warns, and he makes a strong case for Net Neutrality, to keep gatekeepers out of a medium where anyone and everyone has a voice.

Power and Political Discourse.......2007-06-30

At times, I couldn't help but liken Al Gore to Michael Moore. It seemed to me, all the way through the book, he was doing a considerable amount of wining. I don't understand why he just doesn't run for president again.
Al Gore uses this book as an opportunity for political retribution against George W. Bush, the man who stole our democracy from him and us. We, as Americans, were all fooled on a large scale to believe that giving our president full-scale authority after 9-11, was a scary, but necessary thing to do at the time. Bush's plan was also able to fool a great portion of the world at the Nato Summit, as well. In fact as he mentions, that is why some American politicians tend to say "if I had only known what I know now..." Gore essentially summarizes the things in chronoloigical order in the form of critiques, as the things that he would have done better if in Bush's position as president, but is only now limited to the medium he chose here in this book. I suggest that Gore stops voicing his opinions in such small scale endeavors, and run for President. This would be his ultimate retribution - to help restore what he calls a failing democracy. In fact, as a citizen of the United States, I'm telling him to run for President, and place his money where his mouth is.
He attempts to touch on the manifestations of linguistic practices in political discourse, and how the fundamental way that we say things in the public forum can have an impact on its outcome. Language does have everything to do with politics and the control of mass media, but he does not capture the phenomenon that well in this book as some professors of linguistics and linguistic anthropology could. He also mentions that the monologic discourses of television are poisoning our minds, and pidgeon-holing us into an uninformed citizenry, which is an issue that I know of some Harvard degree professors would agree on. He relies on mentioning the philosopher Hegel, but forgets to mention Habermas, Wittgenstein, John L. Austin, John Searl, Dell Hymes, Michael Bakhtin, and many other linguistic theorists to support his attempt to focus on language as a medium for power in discourse. Grammatical errors bothered me at times too, like depending on parenthetical sentences outside of main sentences to finish ideas, as well as having no references like author and year for support of statements that needed them. Aside from that, he does bring an overall awareness to the need for an informed citizenry, and how the use of the Internet can and is facilitating that... as I am putting into practice right now. One voice among many, adding to a discourse that perpetuates the true American Dream, democratic and open, which is something that makes this nation great. We must not lose focus of that, as other theorists have also mentioned, like Noam Chomsky and Immanuel Wallerstein. We are a hegemonic power perhaps headed on its way out from the top of an economic leadership position in the world, but the only thing that can continue to make this nation great is to insure the practice of a free and open democratic process for and by the properly informed people. Gore was successful in raising awareness of the challenges that the Bush Administration has brought us, and how we should deal with them now. I fear that if Gore does not run for president, than he will never be able to live up to his printed words in this book.

Thought-provoking and insightful, disarming and sad, inspiring and hopeful........2007-06-30

As a thinking man, I'm a bit ashamed of some of the other reviews of this wonderful book. Even though Mr. Gore specifically chose the non-partisan path in his essay, people choose to believe that the great problems in this country are an invention of the opposing party. Gore was specific that partisan politics and the superficiality of the distribution of information is but a symptom of a non-partisan virus infecting our nation.

I'm a proud Democrat but an American first. I'm a proud American but a human being first. This isn't a book to piss off conservatives or a book to make liberals feel terrible and, quite eerily, simultaneously good about how much this administration has harmed our democracy.

This book is an honest philosophical, psychological, and sociological study of human nature, democracy, and the power of the populace. And before partisan politics tendencies of the American people resumes into the full-fledged poo-flinging contest it has been for the past 50-odd years, please America, stop and think about what Mr. Gore is trying to tell us.

At Last,A Careful Analysis.......2007-06-29

This is a powerful book,that should be required reading.It's all too easy to fall right in with popular talk show ideas.It's much harder to read and think for ourselves.Besides,it's more fun to speculate on Anna Nicole Smith or currently,Paris Hilton.Sometimes these dramatic stories are so alluring,that we can't spend time on a book of substance,such as the Assault on Reason.It is not easy reading.It is eloquent,heartfelt,and written with the insight of one who has been deeply involved.
One of its great appeals is that we can go to its Notes section and find the sources easily.It is far from propaganda.It is elegant,insightful and well researched.

Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the College de France)

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Biopower and Governmentality

Security, Territory, Population (Lectures at the College de France)
Michel Foucault
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1403986525
Release Date: 2007-05-01

Book Description

Marking a major development in Foucault's thinking, this book derives from the lecture course which he gave at the Collège de France between January and April, 1978. Taking as his starting point the notion of "bio-power," introduced in his 1976 course Society Must be Defended, Foucault sets out to study the foundations of this new technology of power over population. Distinct from punitive, disciplinary systems, the mechanisms of power are here finely entwined with the technologies of security, and it is to 18th century developments of these technologies with which the first chapters of the book are concerned. By the fourth lecture however Foucault's attention turns, focusing on a history of "governmentality" from the first centuries of the Christian era to the emergence of the modern nation state. As Michel Sennelart explains in his afterword, the effect of this change of direction is to "shift the center of gravity of the lectures from the question of biopower to that of government, to such an extent that the former almost entirely eclipses the former ..." Consequently, in light of Foucault's later work, it is tempting to see these lectures as the moment of a radical turning point at which the transition to the problematic of the "government of self and others" would begin.

Customer Reviews:

Biopower and Governmentality.......2007-06-08

A must for understanding the notions of biopower, biopolitics, and governmentality in Foucault's corpus.

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present

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The irony
A question?
A landmark...
This book demands & rewards patience & receptivity to others
music from under the floorboards

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0674177649

Book Description

Are the "culture wars" over? When did they begin? What is their relationship to gender struggle and the dynamics of class? In her first full treatment of postcolonial studies, a field that she helped define, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, one of the world's foremost literary theorists, poses these questions from within the postcolonial enclave.

"We cannot merely continue to act out the part of Caliban," Spivak writes; and her book is an attempt to understand and describe a more responsible role for the postcolonial critic. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason tracks the figure of the "native informant" through various cultural practices--philosophy, history, literature--to suggest that it emerges as the metropolitan hybrid. The book addresses feminists, philosophers, critics, and interventionist intellectuals, as they unite and divide. It ranges from Kant's analytic of the sublime to child labor in Bangladesh. Throughout, the notion of a Third World interloper as the pure victim of a colonialist oppressor emerges as sharply suspect: the mud we sling at certain seemingly overbearing ancestors such as Marx and Kant may be the very ground we stand on.

A major critical work, Spivak's book redefines and repositions the postcolonial critic, leading her through transnational cultural studies into considerations of globality.

Customer Reviews:

The irony.......2007-06-26

I must admit, I did not read the entire book. But it is not because I didn't try.

Spivak is a close associate of Judith Butler, and this text demonstrates the connect -- no person lacking a very specific culural and feminist education can read it.

This is the irony of such texts. Spivak cleary seeks to empower women and individuals of color oppressed by Western hegemony -- ttself a jargon phrase-- yet no one she seeks to liberate could remotely understand her text. Nor could many scholars like myself, who seek to learn from her infinite wisdom.

At some point, I would hope that scholars like Spivak would take a page from the Lawrence Grossbergs of the world and begin to write in more accessible language

To do so is not anti-intelectual -- it is indeed an attempt to ADVANCE scholarship.

A question?.......2006-08-26

how now? a book written about the marginal, the "strung-out", decentered, in a stile one needs a very very expensive education to comprehend? on what side of the pasture are you on?

isnt the appropriation of time one of the nastiest things the elect have done to us? how much time does one have, can have, if one isn't "allowed" to sit in her classes, to have her hand on one's papers, when one has to work, to commute to work, to spend eight hours or more there six days a week?

how does a radical expect the inert to energize when the centrifuge of "modern academia" has separated all the key components of "interaction"?

i want answers.

A landmark..........2006-04-10

As you can already tell by the comments, there is a "clash of cultures" in the academy. It's between:

* People who think philosophy's job is to expand ideas and challenge, versus those who think it should make the present seem more comfortable and make you nod your head in recognition.

* Those who think that gender is relatively unimportant and that work stands for itself; versus those who believe that "to introduce the question of woman changes everything".

* Those who believe that the canon of Western philosophy is adequate to describe the world, and those who believe it has never described the world because it never took the time to understand those that never lived in "the west"

* Those who believe the work of the intellectual should be to outline a philosophy of life to be taken up by others, versus those who believe that it is sometimes "more productive to sabotage what is inexorably to hand than to outline a novel concept that will never seriously be tested".

You get the idea. If you are in the first category of these tensions then there's no point you reading this book. It will confirm all your prejudices.

If the second half of the statements above sounds more like you, then you probably already know this book. But in case you "haven't quite got to it yet", as I hadn't for a while, I can say that this is a book that will reward many detailed readings. It's breadth and depth is breathtaking in an era where the very real problems of generalisation raised by gender/race/colonial analysis have caused many to back away from theorising world systems. As Spivak carefully shows, these systems ("the financialsiation of the globe" - who among the critics could elaborate with such detail on the distinctive impact of informational capital on the rural?) are very much in operation and urgently need to be thought - but never at the expense of forgetting those whose labour is appropriated by those systems. For all the dense theoretical language in the text, Spivak is obviously in a discussion with, for example, the indigenous activist, unlike many of her critics, who complain about her language yet never demonstrate their engagement with e.g. the rural poor.

Let's talk about the language. Yes, it's intimidating. It's philosophy! She's a professional philosopher, that's her job! If you're going to understand the insights of a physicist you'd have to prepare yourself by doing a lot of reading (and experimenting). If you were going to understand a physicist who was pushing the boundaries of the discipline you are probably going to have to be a physicist yourself or be very, very, very interested in the field. As it should be - if I understood what physicists were really doing I'd be worried, given that they study for so long and get all that research money for labs when maybe I could do this in my garage. Despite 15 years of reading social theory (not all the time - I'm not an academic at the moment) I struggled heavily through the first chapter of this book on Kant and Hegel (I know some Hegel, only a little Kant). I'd read two pages and think "I'm not sure I get that, but I'll read it again tomorrow and move on to the next bit anyway." If you're a feminist philosopher I'm sure you'd be going much easier. But the point is, I didn't take it as a reason not to read it - it was a challenge for me to expand my understanding about stuff I thought I knew (e.g., Marx), that she has obviously thought a lot more about than me.

When it got to some things I do know something about (e.g. colonial rhetoric, technology and development), her insights were both revelatory and in accord with my experience at the same time. Anyone with a philosophical bent who has experience in the development field will be troubled by the very convincing case Spivak makes in chapter 4 for development as an instantiation of imperialism. As someone who reads the relevant journals from time to time I have yet to hear anyone with expertise in philosophy and cultural studies outline why Spivak doesn't know what she is talking about, as the Terry Eagleton fan suggets. She does all too well, in a way that intimidates those who made a living pretending they had the answers.

Spivak obviously knows that she's good and the suffer-no-fools tone - some have described it as elitist - might be irritiating for some. I prefer to see it as a persistent frustration with the limitations of language, and an attempt to convey that to the reader. This is not "bad writing". It is very carefully crafted (there are some fantastic, pithy sentences at times) to destabilise the assumptions she knows readers are going to make about the work. If you want to read someone who'll make it all easy, try Andrew Ross (one of my favourite authors, but completely different methodology as befits an American Studies prof).

If you've never read Spivak and aren't completely at home in philosophy and theory, this might not be the place to start. Maybe begin with Landry & Maclean's Spivak Reader and any of her interviews (there's a great one from the journal Signs which is available online). Outside in the Teaching Machinemight be easier after that. But if you are looking for big, challenging ideas that will shift your world-view, this will do it.

As you can tell, I love this book. I think it's a landmark work from someone who is trying to think the world with knowledge and experience of places that previously well-known "world thinkers" never had. It attempts to bring an incredible range of examples and texts into productive conversation. It kind of depresses me because I know I could never write it, yet even by reading it I am no longer as comfortable in subconscious generalisations that Euro-US culture relies on, and that this distances me from some ideas and people. But it has also sharpened my sense of what is important, of where I can make a difference, of what writing can do inside and outside of the academy. It's a great gift if you're prepared to receive it.

This book demands & rewards patience & receptivity to others.......2005-06-08

The indignant and arrogant demands for ease of understanding expressed by so many reviewers here exemplify the passive, anti-intellectual customer service-based epistemology that Spivak educates us against and that drives todays globalizing and enslaving culture. Her book is profound and urgent.

music from under the floorboards.......2002-01-27

Spivak works in the interstices to tease out what has been left out in ideas, in cultures, in histories, in language.
Many people apparently are maddened by her methods because there is no easy "method" to be extracted from her work. Her style is an antithesis to traditional "methods". The only real tool a theorist or critic has is intelligence and that quality is not easily described and perhaps not directly transmittable, especially when the kind of intelligence in question has no precedent and must thus inscribe itself into the language for the first time.

Thomas Paine : Collected Writings : Common Sense / The Crisis / Rights of Man / The Age of Reason / Pamphlets, Articles, and Letters (Library of America)

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Teach Thomas Paine to all Ages
Most Important Founding Father - outstanding one-volume edition of his writings!
Timeless inspiration
Age of Reason
RICKYTHEREADER'S AGENDA

Thomas Paine : Collected Writings : Common Sense / The Crisis / Rights of Man / The Age of Reason / Pamphlets, Articles, and Letters (Library of America)
Thomas Paine
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1883011035

Book Description

Paine was the impassioned democratic voice of the Age of Revolution, and this volume brings together his best-known works--"Common Sense," "The American Crisis," "Rights of Man," "The Age of Reason," along with a selection of letters, articles and pamphlets that emphasizes Paine's American years.

Customer Reviews:

Teach Thomas Paine to all Ages.......2006-12-03

Paine truly is the forgotten founding father. Unbelievably, I never learned about him till college--and only then through specific history classes. In addition to this volume, I suggest one of my recent discoveries: The Elementary Common Sense of Thomas Paine; the 1776 document Common Sense adapted and illustrated for ages 11 on up. It is here on Amazon. Paine, and all of our country's founding documents, should be taught to kids early on.

Most Important Founding Father - outstanding one-volume edition of his writings!.......2006-07-22

Thomas Paine was the most consistent and important of all the American Founding Fathers. He consistently spoke up in favor of liberty and freedom; for example, his opposition to the institution of slavery (which he argued was immoral and un-Christian and thought it quite contradictory to claim to be a Christian on the one hand and support slavery on the other hand) - Paine also spoke up in support of women's rights, freedom of thought, the poor, etc.

The important thing about Paine is that he practiced what he preached, as opposed to just about every other founding father (e.g., Jefferson saying all are "created equal" but owning slaves, or Adams "dismissing" his wife's assertion that they too should be included in the political process). I don't think we ought to condemn those individuals for the beliefs that they had, indeed they were products of their time period - and they are worthy of study. However, I also believe that we should praise those who were able to step out of that period and see things as they are, this is what Paine was able to do.

If you doubt Paine's importance in the history of American independence, consider the following; probably no other phamphlet brought the idea of independence to the mind of the colonists like Paine's "Common Sense" did and it was Paine's "Crisis #1" that was read to Washington's soldiers before they prepared for the biggest fight of the American Revolution. Paine's defense of the French Revolution in his "Rights of Man" sparked off a publication war that has yet to be matched and his "The Age of Reason" delineated the philosophical ideas that most of the founding fathers had with regard to religion (regardless of what the religious right would have you to believe).

Paine's mistake was not believing what most of the founding fathers believed, that the "common man and woman" was not intellectual enough to handle the arguments that he (and the others) were advocating. It was his consistency which brought about his downfall - this is a shame, because he is one of the most important thinkers to come out of the Revolutionary Period in American history.

Timeless inspiration.......2006-07-08

Thomas Paine, especially in The Age of Reason, did not put forth completely original ideas. Many of his contemporaries had the same critisms that Paine did in regard to organized religion especially Christianity. However, Thomas Paine organized such thoughts in a way that they were accessible to common men. Unfortunately his brave and inspirational work was his downfall. Closeminded and fearful citizens, like RICKITHEREADER in our modern times were frightened that perhaps Paine was tearing a hole the the fabric of their blind faith and because of this, Paines' last work, The Age of Reason, left him to die alone and impoverished. He was abandoned, even by his intellectual contemporaries, most who agreed with him but were not brave enough to voice their beliefs in the common vernacular. I was inspired by Paine who wrote, "My mind is my own church," which was not the voice of an atheist but the voice of a man who really did know the "truth" and his true path. Unlike RickitheReader, I have read both the bible and Paine with an open mind and heart. The joy of reading is the ability to let it lead you to new places. Thomas Paine would have said it better. Read this compilation and it will lead you to new places, wherever your faith is.

Age of Reason.......2006-05-31

Paine's "Age of Reason" was a mind-blowing revelation for me, so I'll focus mainly on that in this review. Although he has little formal education (fortunately it doesn't require much to know that hearsay, even the printed variety, is not always accurate), Paine is a brilliant independent thinker who advocates critically and intelligently evaluating the Bible. He dismisses the need to insist on divine explanations for what is simply the warlike, violent behavior of a typical tribal society, and shows his unique ability to filter the positive aspects of Biblical teaching (i.e. kindness, mercy, regard for one's neighbors) from the more mythological aspects of it (creationism, the fall of Satan, etc.).

While it can be argued that because none of us have physically met Thomas Paine and thus have no reason to believe that he is truly the author of these works (just as we have never met Jesus and have no reason to believe that he said or did anything recorded in the Bible), this doesn't really matter. Just like Paine points out that he can take the positive aspects of Jesus' teachings and employ them whether or not he believes in Jesus himself, so can we take the positive aspects of Paine's writings and employ them whether or not we believe that he ever existed.

Another thing about "Age of Reason" that I found particularly gripping is Paine's ability to focus on the big picture regarding nature, rather than the individualized picture. That is, while nature may not seem fair to each of us individuals who suffer and are unhappy, it is fair in a larger sense. While no other species but humans have developed the technology to (mostly) beat the system, for every species there is a species which it preys upon and which preys upon it. Until humans developed the scores of vaccines and weapons and mass production of food that we have, we were just as much a part of this natural balance as any other creature. Every species was equally liable to suffer extinction or overpopulation, and one's rising or falling were based on simple natural laws that applied to everyone -- there is no magic. It is this "justice" that, I believe, Paine was talking about, not that there is no pain or struggle. Every species has both a degree of robbing, raping, and killing, as well as a degree of giving, nurturing, and reproducing. It's all part of the cycle, and while it is painful, it is neither good nor bad.

Anyway, though Paine tends to go off on nitpicking Biblical tangents, the underlying point of Age of Reason is fairly straightforward: the various fallacies and cruelties of the Bible do reveal it as simply another human manuscript, no more divine and no less insightful than any other, and one can and should glean the good while straining out the bad, feeling no obligation to piously swallow it all whole if one does not agree. Or, in a phrase: think critically.

RICKYTHEREADER'S AGENDA.......2006-01-27

Paine's writing is rich with stunning clarity. He was one of America's most brilliant and inspiring writers. That is if you don't read any of 'RICKYTHEREADER's reviews. RICKYTHEREADER has reviewed exactly four books on the amazon website, all about Paine and all delving into proselytizing (over 50 mentions of the bible or Jesus between the four reviews). Further, he's obsessed with the fact that Paine failed out of school at the age of 12. Does this mean we must discount his body of work? Einstein was a slow learner, perhaps that 'lightbulb' idea wasn't quite as good as we all thought. Hey, think what you want, but disliking someone's views has little to do with the quality of their work. Especially of someone as deservingly revered as Paine. If he's such a mediocre writer, why did RICKYTHEREADER dig into FOUR of his books? I love Paine, but I've not read that many! My message to RICKYTHEREADER: Love God if you wish, but don't write reviews with an agenda. Write a review of the work.

Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West

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Juicy
Not quite as dense as some might insist...
Mixed feelings
My new bible
truly "a hand grenade disguised as a book"!

Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
John Ralston Saul
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0029277256

Customer Reviews:

Juicy.......2007-06-18

I bought this book in 1997, 10 years ago, and it was already 5 years old. It was enjoyable but a slog to get through and not all was retained in my head at the end of the read. I was left tired and I moved on. The true value of the book became apparent as the years passed - every reread of portions gave pleasure through forgotten information newly revealed, or insights that have finally sunk in, or new color to previously remembered insights. I bought one other more recent book of his, "Equilibrium", and they complement each other. The intervening years continue to demonstrate the validity of many arguments in the book, thus getting closer to the definition of a 'classic'. One of my best book purchases.

Not quite as dense as some might insist..........2007-04-17

Few books that are truly worth reading make for an easy read, and this is certainly the case with Voltaire's Bastards. Other reviewers have complained of Saul's density and have even accused him of dull, poor writing. Don't be fooled by such baseless nonsense. Saul is actually an excellent writer. He beautifully elucidates the finer, invariably ignored philosophical points of our modern political culture (which seeps through into every stratum of our lives) with grace and ease. The "density" arises when he undertakes historical narratives which lend credence to the points he makes. I'll agree that this can often make for slow, dry reading. However, his astute commentary on the modern "theology" of reason, power, secrecy, language and bureacracy more than compensate for such shortcomings. If you've ever felt inexplicably frustrated by what seems to be an amputated, purely rationalist, beady-eyed approach to politics, culture and knowledge in general, then the ideas presented within this book will likely excite you as much as they excited me.

Mixed feelings.......2006-12-31

Much has been said amongst the other reviews about the seemingly incoherent, diatribal and drawn-out nature of Saul's book. And I agree. It's far from being a masterpiece in the larger sense of the world. What's brilliant about this book is not how right the author is but how wrong (often infuratingly so!) he is. Because I found that I've learnt more from this book, including the wrong parts than I have from many books that were more coherent or right. Unfortunately this does not seem to be Saul's aim.

He begins with section 1 called "Argument". However it read like a bunch of generalisations and sweeping statements without much argument. What he seems to be saying is this: that the concept of reason has been hijacked in the last century of public life in the west. That it has come to mean a bureaucratic, elitist, undemocratic, secretive, closed approach that also refuses to take into account the realities of life. That this style of reason is fanatical in that insisting that it is always right as a dogma. And finally, that it has been the result of untold amounts of suffering because it proclaims itself as a moral system, whereas it's only a system of management. Because of this, it can and is used to inhuman ends because it is itself devoid of any values.

All this I largely agree with. Especially in terms of the last point about reason being amoral you only need to read some Hume. However this exposition of his argument comes only from his second section, where he actually gives some concrete examples. The second section is largely a diatribe that attempts to apply these arguments to concrete historical examples. I think this is the strongest section of the book in that it is actually about something. The third section is some musings on art, individualism etc. much of which was entirely disagreeable.

What then are the strengths of the book? It is a hodge-podge that speaks of everything under the sun and often misses as a result. But by speaking about everything Saul successfully expresses the extent to which things are a problem. If he were more methodical one could claim that such-and-such and such-and-such institution is broken. However this book has convinced me that the world is much more broken than even I previously thought. He just could have done it in a third of the word count. I would definitely recommend the book but not as some incredible analysis but rather as something that will provoke and engage almost every reader. It seems paradoxical but in the chaos that is criticised by so many, Saul makes some surprising observations that would have been missed if he was more careful.

My new bible.......2006-09-24

Some books are to be read once. Others, like this one are to be read many times.
I could have given it 4 stars, because there are places that are dry and repetetive. In those places, I would turn the pages.
Places like the evolution of the purpose of art, beginning with religious motivation and moving into art, for art's sake. I didn't care though.
The fact is, the details JRS includes are things I have never heard before and they are what makes this book a MUST HAVE.

"Jefferson, founder and patron of the University of Virginia, never allowed his university to give degrees. He considered them pretentious, irrelevant to learning and unconnected to the preparation for responsiblity. This wasn't idealism. It was the opinion of the most successful practitioner of reason. The purpose of universities has now been inverted. Learning has become a goal-oriented process aimed at winning a degree."

"Modern wine tends to be filled with sulfur, chemical stabilizers, fungicides, beet sugar and alcohol additives. These elements, not grape alcohol, are the cause of most hangovers. Contemporary wine doesn't taste anything like Henry IV's Nuit St. Georges. It is forced, matures quicker and dies faster. Like nuclear reactors, modern wine is part of the secretive promise of our society.

truly "a hand grenade disguised as a book"!.......2006-05-02

If you want to understand the world we live, then read this book. It's message is liberating. It is totally on the mark. It was published in 1992, but it fully explains everything that has happened since then. The author is brilliant. It's a citizen's survival guide to the 21st century. The book is very dense so don't expect a lazy, breezy read.

Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

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Derrida Deconstructs the notion of "Rouge States"

Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
Jacques Derrida
Manufacturer: Stanford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0804749515
Release Date: 2004-12-13

Book Description

Rogues, published in France under the title Voyous, comprises two major lectures that Derrida delivered in 2002 investigating the foundations of the sovereignty of the nation-state. The term “État voyou” is the French equivalent of “rogue state,” and it is this outlaw designation of certain countries by the leading global powers that Derrida rigorously and exhaustively examines.

Derrida examines the history of the concept of sovereignty, engaging with the work of Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, Schmitt, and others. Against this background, he delineates his understanding of “democracy to come,” which he distinguishes clearly from any kind of regulating ideal or teleological horizon. The idea that democracy will always remain in the future is not a temporal notion. Rather, the phrase would name the coming of the unforeseeable other, the structure of an event beyond calculation and program. Derrida thus aligns this understanding of democracy with the logic he has worked out elsewhere. But it is not just political philosophy that is brought under deconstructive scrutiny here: Derrida provides unflinching and hard-hitting assessments of current political realities, and these essays are highly engaged with events of the post-9/11 world.

Customer Reviews:

Derrida Deconstructs the notion of "Rouge States".......2006-11-05

If you are in to Derrida, political science, contemporary political philosophy, understanding the contemporary political landscape, and notions of a new Democracy to come - this is a must read.

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

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Too much speculation
monism implies phrenology.
Thoughtful analysis of how the mind works.
Damasio concludes: "I am, Therefore I think."
A Biological Basis for Emotion and Logic

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Antonio Damasio
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Mapping the Mind

ASIN: 014303622X

Book Description

Since Descartes famously proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person's true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes' Error in 1995. Antonio Damasio—"one of the world's leading neurologists" (The New York Times)—challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wondrously engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.

Customer Reviews:

Too much speculation.......2007-03-23

If you want to read about scientific facts this is not the book for you. The scientific underpinnings of this speculative book are briefly mentioned and not elaborated upon in much detail. It's better to just read his paper on the somatic marker hypothesis (which is disputed by the way). Without a background in neuroscience it is difficult to evaluate his ideas in a serious way, and anyway he asks for introspection (a la William James) from the reader more than anything else.

monism implies phrenology........2007-02-24

If Dr. Damasio is so smart then why doesn't he admit that his thesis implies phrenology? A: because he knows that it is a pseudoscience.

Thoughtful analysis of how the mind works........2006-10-30

The French philosopher René Descartes could not have been more wrong, according to Antonio Damasio, a neurologist at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. Descartes thought the mind was completely separate from the body - an immaterial "thinking thing," the essence of which was cool conscious reasoning untainted by base physical influence. Through his research on patients with prefrontal cortex damage, Damasio discovered that reason, like almost all mental processes, is "embodied," that is, based in the human being's physical self. Emotions and other states that are rooted in physicality profoundly influence not only what people reason about, but how they reason. Without them, people either can't make decisions or they make self-defeating ones. This book tells how Damasio created, developed and tested his theory of embodied cognition, which is now widely influential in psychology, neuroscience and behavioral economics. We recommend this refreshingly nuanced, conversationally told (though sometimes desultory) narrative of scientific invention and discovery to readers who want to learn about this profound, influential set of ideas from the source. You will never think about your mind the same way again.

Damasio concludes: "I am, Therefore I think.".......2006-09-09

"Descartes' Error" begins with the classic head-injury tale of Phinaes Gage - a man who lost a large section of his brain, and lived. "Gage was no longer Gage" his friends said after the accident. Gage's soul, his identity drastically changed. This, Damasio argues, proves materialism. There is no mind/body duality; the mind and the body are one.

The best parts of the book are the stories told of various brain injury cases which Damasio investigated. One patient had a brain tumor removed - and all of his emotions were removed with it. Intellectually, the patient was fine. But he was incapable of caring about anything. As a result, he had a terrible time making future plans.

The trouble with "Descartes' Error" is Damasio's tendecy to go on academic rants, spinning theories on how emotions create character traits in our brains by using feedback loops... (add technical words here, followed by medical terms) etc. I skimmed the chapters on emotion. These theories about how emotions are the seat of the soul - are rife with rambling, dry, academic speculations.

Too bad only half the book is devoted to neurological oddities - such as, a patient whose entire left side of his body is paralyzed, but incapable of realizing that anything is wrong. This stuff I find endlessly fascinating.

If you wish to read a book about weird neurological happenings, check out "A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers" by V. S. Ramachandran. If you want brain philosophy, read Daniel Dennett.

A Biological Basis for Emotion and Logic.......2006-08-16

Damasio attempts nothing less than the quantification of the soul by identifying the likely structures of the brain -- the prefrontal lobes among others -- responsible for logic, reason, emotion and personality. He recounts several stories of patients with prefrontal damage and the peculiar symptoms they display -- then tests his theories with a number of clever experiments carried out in his lab at the University of Iowa. His conclusions are persuasive and well-thought out, and will cause you to re-evaluate much of what you THINK you know about the role of emotion in logical reasoning.

However, the book is flawed in a couple of different directions.

1. The text alternates between well-written, smooth-flowing, extremely readable sections and dense, highly-technical, grammatically-gnarled sentences such as, "In terms of the prefrontal cortices, I am suggesting that somatic markers, which operate on the bioregulatory and social domain aligned with the ventromedial sector, influence the operation of attention and working memory within the dorsolateral sector, the sector on which operations on other domains of knowledge depend [page 198]." Too many sentences of this opacity slowed reading speed to a crawl, and made me wonder about his intended audience.

2. Numerous and frequent references are given to other researchers in the field, but he very rarely elaborates on the directions or results of their research. As a non-academic I am not going to dig out the original articles for myself, and would have preferred Damasio himself provide the summaries.

3. One researcher frequently cited is named "Hanna Damasio" (who coincidentally is also the illustrator of the book) but no mention is made of her relationship to the author. A courtesy explanation would have been in order.

4. The author expresses the usual scientific caution about over-generalizing or drawing broader implications from his work. However, it seems to me the most exciting possibility deriving from his research is exactly that, a biological basis for emotion. I think he would have been forgiven for throwing caution to the winds in the last chapter or two and speculating wildly about the connections between emotional exuberance and brain structure abnormalities, or oppositely emotional monotony and the biologic cause. As it is, his work is solid but measured, which downplays the truly groundbreaking nature of it.

Handbook of Action Research: Concise Paperback Edition

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Transform Your Mind and Then the World

Handbook of Action Research: Concise Paperback Edition

Manufacturer: Sage Publications Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1412920302

Book Description

With the Handbook of Action Research hailed as a turning point in how action research is framed and understood by scholars, this student edition has been structured to provide an easy inroad into the field for researchers and students. It includes concise chapter summaries and an informative introduction that draws together the different strands of action research and reveals their diverse applications as well as their interrelations.

Divided into four parts, there are important themes of thinking and practice running throughout:
Part I reviews the range of paradigms and metatheories, the perspectives, values and epistemologies that inform the different practices of action research.
Part II represents the diverse approaches to action research and the range of methodologies.
Part III shows how different researchers have applied the various different groundings and practices in their own work.
Part IV addresses some of the competencies that may be required for the initiation and conduct of the research.

All students and researchers interested in Action Research will make this Handbook their first point of reference when seeking means of engaging with the subject.

Customer Reviews:

Transform Your Mind and Then the World.......2005-05-01

You've been tasked with changing the world, but the world you find doesn't conform to the world the taskmasters imagined. Simultaneously providing a broad overview of Action Reseach and illustrative examples, the Handbook of Action Research illuminates the meaning of "reality" and provides guidelines for manifesting the ethos of the bumpersticker that reads, "Question Authority."

Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge

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great read
A good starter
Great book on logic and the meaning of 'knowing'
Brain Workout in a Nutshell
An old friend back in print

Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge

Manufacturer: Anchor
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle - How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers

ASIN: 0385242719
Release Date: 1989-12-01

Amazon.com

We conceive of and describe the world in ways that usually work just fine, but in the far corners of the labyrinth of reason, our best intentions fold back on themselves, and we end up trapped in an intractable loop or tumbling down a chute of infinite regress. Labyrinths of Reason is a collection of classic philosophical thought experiments and other imponderables that push reason and language to their logical limits. Beyond just idle brainteasers, William Poundstone shows that these mental exercises have profound implications for such fields as cryptography, decision theory, subatomic physics, and computer programming. But most of all, they're good, clean philosophical fun!

Book Description

This sharply intelligent, consistently provocative book takes the reader on an astonishing, thought-provoking voyage into the realm of delightful uncertainty--a world of paradox in which logical argument leads to contradiction and common sense is seemingly rendered irrelevant.

Customer Reviews:

great read.......2006-01-29

You should be math-oriented to get the most out of this book - but some of the paradoxes are dandy and the 'prisoner's dilemma' is always worth a review.

A good starter.......2004-09-04

I enjoyed this book, but one should realize the audience for this work. I was a novcie to logic when I read this book and felt quite satisfied with the content and structure.

Labytinths does not overwhelm the reader; it introduces a fair amout of classic logic problems, scenarios, etc. Many of the examples offered would serve well in a high school math class.

Great book on logic and the meaning of 'knowing'.......2004-02-29

I have to confess - I bought this book after reading Mr. Poundstone's book 'How would you move mount Fuji?' I probably never would have bought this book otherwise - and I'm glad I did.
So first of all - this is not a riddle book. Its a philosophy book trying to dismantle well know paradoxes in modern epistemology. It's not revolutionary in any way, but it collects its ideas from good sources and gives a nice and coherent view of the topic and the field.
I would recommend this book only to people willing to read slowly and think about what they read. The journey is not easy - but Mr. Poundstone would get you to your destination every time.

Brain Workout in a Nutshell.......2002-04-09

With this collection of paradoxes and intrigues, Poundstone gracely accomplished what he set out to do -- guiding the readers on an unforgettable journey through the many Labyrinths of Reason. Chapter by chapter, Poundstone took some famous paradox as a seed, and made it grew into a whole field of thought provoking ideas.

A great way to spend Spring Break if you're looking for some fun for your mind.

An old friend back in print.......2002-03-25

I had this book in hardcover when it was new (the late 1980s), but I misplaced it some time ago. Now that this paperback edition is back in print, I've bought a replacement copy and I'm glad I did.

Paradoxes are fascinating. You may not agree with Jorge Luis Borges when he speculates that paradoxes and antinomies are evidence that the "undivided divinity within us" has "dreamt the world" (although there is actually a pretty good case that something like this is so). But at any rate, a good paradox is -- to borrow a phrase that was not available when Poundstone wrote this book -- an "incongruity in the structure of the Matrix," an indication that there's _something_ subtly wrong with our intellectual take on reality, whether or not we can agree on _what's_ wrong. (In general but with rare exceptions, there isn't any widespread agreement about exactly how to resolve any of the famous paradoxes, even the ancient ones credited to Zeno of Elea.)

William Poundstone's _Labyrinths of Reason_ is as good an introduction as I know to this entire area of philosophical thought. His exposition is clear and intelligible without sacrificing either accuracy or depth, and he tackles a very broad range of philosophical puzzles, from the problems of inductive logic to NP-completeness. Moreover, he's clearly fascinated by these puzzles and he infects the reader with that fascination. If you don't like Poundstone's book, then this entire subject probably isn't your cup of tea.

If you _do_ like Poundstone's book, you'll find it a window onto what may be a whole new world (if you haven't read other books on this subject before). It's a great way to introduce yourself to mind-bending problems at the foundations of several fields: philosophy, of course (especially epistemology), but also the theory of complexity and computability, artificial intelligence, and even some aspects of theology.

Depending which features interest you most, you might go on to Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning tour-de-force _Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid_, a magical mystery tour that is primarily intended as a defense of artificial intelligence. (Can machines be conscious? Yes, Hofstadter argues, because we are such machines ourselves.) Or you may prefer to start with his _Metamagical Themas_, part of which deals with the Prisoner's Dilemma. (Robert Axelrod's _The Evolution of Cooperation_ will be a good follow-up too.)

Or you might want to read another good introductory discussion with a somewhat different "take"; in that case you'll want to consider R.M. Sainsbury's _Paradoxes_, which is aimed at arousing philosophical interest in these problems. If you want to see an attempt at a general solution of the full spectrum of paradoxes, check out Nicholas Rescher's _Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range, and Resolution_.

Or you may want to move on to logic and logic puzzles. In that case Raymond Smullyan is your man. Find used copies of _What Is the Name of This Book?, _This Book Needs No Title_, and _5000 B.C._, and/or get a new copy of _The Tao Is Silent_. Or, if you want to dive into rigorous formal logic, try his _First-Order Logic_ and then _Godel's Incompleteness Theorems_. (You may want to read Graham Priest's _Logic: A Very Short Introduction_ first.)

Or if it's the philosophical-theological aspects of infinity that got your attention, try Rudy Rucker's _Infinity and the Mind_. Rucker also deals with, and tries to resolve, some of the paradoxes discussed by Poundstone (e.g. the Berry paradox, involving "the smallest number not nameable in fewer than nineteen syllables," which is apparently an eighteen-syllable name for that very number).

Wherever you go next, if you're not already familiar with these subjects, you won't find a better introduction than Poundstone's book. If any of the above sounds interesting to you, start here.

Risk and Reason: Safety, Law, and the Environment

Average customer rating:

A short review of 'Risk and Reason'
Political
Insights Into Rational Risk Management for IT Professionals
Huge Helping of Reason, Needs Salt

Risk and Reason: Safety, Law, and the Environment
Cass R. Sunstein
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521016258

Book Description

What should be done about airplane safety and terrorism, global warming, polluted water, nuclear power, and genetically engineered food? Decision-makers often respond to temporary fears, and the result is a situation of hysteria and neglect--and unnecessary illness and death. Risk and Reason explains the sources of these problems and explores what can be done about them. It shows how individual thinking and social interactions lead us in foolish directions. Offering sound proposals for social reform, it explains how a more sensible system of risk regulation, embodied in the idea of a "cost-benefit state," could save many thousands of lives and many billions of dollars too--and protect the environment in the process. Cass R. Sunstein is the Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Appointed by President Clinton to serve on the Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Television Broadcasters. His many books include Republic.com (Princeton, 2001) and Designing Democracy (Oxford, 2001). He has worked in the United States Department of Justice and advised on law reform and constitution-making in many nations.

Customer Reviews:

A short review of 'Risk and Reason'.......2004-08-08

It is sometimes referred to as "emotional decision making", when after accidents which cause loss of life, government authorities decide to spend irrational huge budgets to try to prevent these accidental risks from happening again. This 2002-book of Prof. Sunstein from the U of Chicago explains the sources of such irrational behaviour and comes up with novel ideas what can be done about it. This book contains a great deal of new material, but it also draws on Sunstein's publications in the J of Risk and Uncertainty, Stan L Rev., and his 2001-book 'The cost-benefit state', amongst others.

The book gives the reader a lot of recent case studies, such as the sniper murders in the Washington DC area in fall 2002, the SARS epidemic, the Love Canal controversy in the 80s, as illustrations of people's unjustified fear, which in the same time neglects the real hazards, such as obesity, indoor air pollution, sun exposure, etc.

Risk and Reason advocates the government to produce cost benefit analyses (CBA) before choosing an emotional course of action. Sunstein argues in his book to see CBA as a pragmatic tool, designed to promote a better appreciation of the consequences of a certain regulation, rather than a form of unethical, barely human calculation, treating health and life as variables for some kind of huge maximising objective function. The author succeeds in delivering this message to the reader very well.

Sunstein urges toward four alternative strategies in optimal cost-saving risk regulation: disclosure of information to the public, economic incentives, risk reduction contracts and free market environmentalism. With the economic incentives he means financial penalties for harm producing behaviour, and tradable emission rights (similar as the Kyoto protocol is designed to reduce global warming. The alleged fact that risk creators might be given a right to create harm is shown to be false.

Political.......2003-08-14

Sunstein is a lawyer. He is neither a scientist nor an economist. His advocacy of (what he calls) "rational" and "scientific" models of risk evaluation appears to be motivated by politics, not good science or economics. Be wary of his methodology and his rigor.

Insights Into Rational Risk Management for IT Professionals.......2003-01-18

While this book focuses on government regulation of health and environmental risks (regulation is government-speak for risk management), IT risk managers can learn a lot about IT risk management from the book. For example, Chapter Three is entitled "Are Experts Wrong?", which will tell you why you need to be cautious about adopting "Best Practices." Chapter Five is entitled "Reducing Risks Rationally," just what every risk manager should be striving to do. Sunstein makes a very convincing case for the value of cost benefit analysis in managing risks. If you are responsible for risk management, get this book and read it.

Huge Helping of Reason, Needs Salt.......2002-12-02

The bottom line on this book is clear: our governance of risk to the public tends to be managed by political gut reaction rather than informed investigation; there is no clear doctrine for studying and articulating risk (for example, distinguishing between high risks to a few and low but sustained risks to the many, or between three levels of cost-benefit analysis so that choices can be made); and the best form of risk management may be through the effective communication of risk information to the public rather than imposed costs on private sector enterprises.

As reasoned as the book is, it also constitutes a direct attack on all those who expouse the "precautionary principle." While I do not agree completely with the author, who seems to feel that rational study allows for the discounting of any risk to the point where it can be economically and politically managed at an affordable cost, he certainly take the debate to an entirely new level and his book is--quite literally--worth tens of billions of dollars in potential regulatory risk savings.

Most compelling is his methodical aggregation of data from several sources to show that the cost of saving one life (he notes that we fail to distinguish adequately between a life saved for a few years and a life saved for many years, or between young lives saved for a lifetime and old lives saved for a brief span of time). Table 2.1 on page 30 is quite astonishing--of 45 major regulated risks, one (drinking water) costs over $92 billion per premature death averted; eight including asbestos cost between $50 million and $4 billion; seven including arsenic and copper cost between $13 million and $45 million; 14 including various electrical standards cost between $1 million and $10 million per death averted; and 15 cost less than $1 million per death averted.

What cost human life? Even on this there is no standard, and even within a single regulatory agency (e.g. the Environmental Protection Agency) there are different calculations used in relation to different risks being regulated. The author does a really fine job of comparing the public perception of the value of a life saved ($1.3 million for automobile-related risks, $103 million for aviation-related risks) with the values used by the government and the courts, which vary widely (into the billions) but seem to hover between $10 million and $30 million per life saved and without regard the the number of life-years actually involved.

The heart of the book is in its conclusion, where the author proposes a four-part strategy for dramatically reducing the cost of regulatory risk management, suggesting that we focus on 1) disclosure of information to the public; 2) economic incentives; 3) risk reduction contracts; and 4) free market environmentalism. With respect to the latter, he is strongly supportive of allowing the "sale" of pollution privileges between nations and industries and companies.

For additional observations on reducing risk to the future of life see my reviews of Joe Thorton on "Pandora's Poison," Raffensperger and Tickner on "Protecting Public Health & The Environment," Novacek on "The Biodiversity Crisis," Czech on "Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train," Lomberg on "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Helvarg on "Blue Frontier," and Wilson's "The Future of Life."

Cass Sunstein and Lawrence Lessig join Jerry Berman and Marc Rotenberg and Mike Godwin as America's "top guns" in responsible law-making. This book makes a great deal of sense, is worth a great deal of money, and should guide the future evolution of regulatory and information-driven risk management.

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