The Mind Club

May 23, 2016
The late Wegner (The Illusion of Conscious Will), professor of psychology at Harvard University, and Gray, assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, explore the qualifications of belonging to "that special collection of entities who can think and feel." Offering a bevy of examples, they posit that the degree to which a human, animal, or thing possesses an emotionally or cognitively sharp mind is in the mind of the beholder. For instance, when we dislike, fear, compete with, or lust after other people, we tend to dehumanize them. Conversely, when a technological object isn't working, people tend to humanize it. But it is in understanding the self that humans are perhaps most deluded; we're prone to "choice blindness," confirmation bias, and anthropocentrism. The fragility of self-knowledge is troubling, but may also be liberating. "If the self is merely a chain of memories, then it should be relatively easy to dissolve these links and melt away the distance between ourselves and others," the authors suggest. Wegner (1948â2013) died during the writing of the book, and Gray did well by his mentor, completing a very thoughtful look at the degree to which humans are, primarily, perceivers. Illus. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc.

February 15, 2016
Do the dead have thoughts? The late Harvard psychology professor Wegner (The Illusion of Conscious Will, 2002, etc.), assisted by neuroscientist Gray (Mind Perception and Morality/Univ. of North Carolina), ponders that ethereal question and much more. I think, therefore I am. I know I am--but what about you? We scarcely know our own thoughts, it seems, but we accord other humans, and other beings, respect and agency because we acknowledge that they have thoughts, that they have mind. Never mind that we may be wrong about how much respect we accord others; for instance, as the authors write in a move guaranteed to tick off cat lovers, we "extend more protection to kittens than crows, despite the fact that corvids are much smarter." Yes, they are, demonstrably and measurably, but our view otherwise grants kittens slightly more capital in the animal rights department. And what of dead people? What, particularly, of a dead you? Write the authors, with admirable clarity, "trying to perceive your dead mind is paradoxical, because you have to perceive a state that is incapable of perception--which is impossible while you are currently perceiving." The authors' approach to understanding the minds of others--whether those minds are those of people we consider enemies or people who for whatever reason cannot express themselves--is a touch softer than the hard-core neuroscience of, say, Antonio Damasio. Still, they look at some very tough questions: how do we sort our thoughts about the minds of others in such a way that we can rationalize torture? (The answer hinges on levels of empathy.) What kind of mind does God have, if God exists? (A provocative hint: "God is perceived as being very high in agency but relatively low in experience.") And so forth, all leading to the wise if unsettling thought that "our perceptions are all we have." Complex science lightly delivered; a pleasure for anyone comfortable with the thought that knowing others' minds will improve our own.

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