Fascinating Listen

I've been thinking about getting hold of this book for several years and I find myself with mixed feelings after finishing the audio version. The content is very dense, and would benefit from a somewhat slower read than was given here.

In places, I'm pretty sure that the more complex sentence structures were not correctly reflected by the rhythm in which they were read. I was also a little disappointed by the lack of 'humour' in the reading, when several passages had clear self-deprecating intentions and others (perhaps less clearly) gently poked fun at competing views.

The content made up for these inadequacies, but I feel Ill still need to get hold of the print version (or e-book) to allow myself a more leisurely and considered read

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Brilliant! A Theory of Life, Universe & Everything

This is not an easy read/listen, but if like me, you often find yourself caught between the disenchanting sterility of scientism, the often outdated superstitions of religion, and the flakiness of many New Age beliefs it is well worth the effort.

"Mind & Cosmos" not only rationally challenges our current materialist presumption, but proposes a plausible 'third way' between the two modern polarities of 'theism' (which Nagel defines as a belief in the primordial nature of mind), and 'materialist atheism' (a belief in the primordial nature of matter).

The success of Science has established in many people's minds that everything can (and in time will) be explained in terms of physics, chemistry & biology. Yet the "Hard Problem" of consciousness remains intractable. Indeed as Nagel points out, we are further than ever from a reductive materialist explanation of consciousness. If it is the case that consciousness is irreducible, as seems increasingly likely, this brings into serious doubt the whole ontology of materialism as an adequate foundation for the explanations of science. Consciousness is part of biology, yet our current biological theories (e.g. evolutionary theory) take no account of this.

Equally problematic is the opposite theistic polarity, which takes mind and intention outside of Nature altogether to the realm of "God".

Nagel instead proposes the co-emergence of mind and matter as a more complete and satisfying ontology, in the form of 'neutral monism', ascribing a Panpsychist experiential dimension down even to the level of fundamental physics.

This is where for me, things get exciting, for it changes the metaphor of the universe from mechanistic machine, to living organism, of which we are co-creative parts. By bringing 'mind' back into Nature, he argues speculatively for an intentional direction in cosmological evolution. We are the universe becoming self aware, experiential beings in an experiential world, with an evolutionary direction of travel towards even greater complexity, knowledge and self awareness.

In summary, this is not the easiest of books, though it is well and clearly read, but what excited me is it is a genuine attempt, by a well respected Philosopher to see beyond the polarities of both disenchanted materialism and religious idealism, and to reclaim our place as intentional beings integral to the organismic universe we inhabit of mind/matter stuff.

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Read this.

Pretty heavy going with regards to terminology, look alive. Good book though, short and sweet.

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Shower

The somewhat shallow musings of a bloke, the kind of things you think of in the shower. The narrator is not quite so relaxed and goes at it like an actor auditioning for the role of Obstreperous Professor.

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Terrible narration

Any additional comments?

The content of thIs book is good, but the narration is terrible. Brian Troxell, according to a Google search, is an actor, not a scientist or philosopher. He may well be a good narrator of fiction works, and I wouldn't want to judge him on his performance in those (I haven't heard anything else narrated by him), but his voice isn't suitable for this kind of subject matter.

Why is the narration so bad?

First, it's far too fast and breathless; one gets the impression he doesn't have a deep understanding of the subject matter, but rather just knows how to read according to the rules of grammar. He also starts new sentences far too quickly, not allowing the implications of often quite dense previous sentences to sink in (possibly for himself as much as for his reader), and so one often finds oneself wanting to pause and go back -- which wouldn't be so bad if the whole book wasn't so dense all the way through, but as it is, it's a complete disaster.

Second, his voice is rather monotonic, possibly because he doesn't seem to be connecting with the rather dry narrative as he might do with fictional material. I don't think it would be impossible to read the book out loud in an interesting way, but it would need a narrator who engaged with, and understood, the work.

It might have been better (if still not spectacular) if he'd read it at half the pace. I think I'm going to have to return this title and go for the Kindle version, which I will be able to read at my natural pace so as to allow its meaning to be absorbed. I should have listened to the sample to have avoided my mistake.

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