Bradford Books

Why do humans sleep? This question offers many answers. Physical rest at first seems the logical answer, but individuals deprived of sleep but allowed physical rest are often just as tired as those who worked thru the night. Resting the brain might be the next logical answer. This book looks at the latter reason, and takes it several steps further. Specifically, Dr. Jouvet argues that the primary purpose of sleep is to dream, and that dreaming is genetically hard-wired into the human organism, and is essential a human function as breathing, eating and drinking.

The author goes over the history of sleep research, of which he is a reknowned expert. He examines research done on both humans and other animals, and shows us what we know, and what we don't know, about sleep and dreaming. He cites experimental data that shows how dreaming is often the central part of sleep, and how those allowed to sleep, but prevented from dreaming, can suffer numerous medical and psychological problems.

Overall, this is an interesting book. The book serves as a good introduction to the science of sleep, dreaming, nuerology, and psychology. The book also is well-referenced, and gives good background on this topic. Overall, I recommend this book.

Having completed my thesis on the functions of REM sleep, I have read a great deal in the area of sleep research.

While Jouvet is undoubtedly one of the pioneers in sleep research, this book is less than ground-breaking. Jouvet postulates that the function of REM sleep is to periodically reinforce genetic programs, in order to maintain the functional synaptic circuits responsible for our psychological heredity. Basically, he is saying this "genetic reprogramming" would restore our individuality and diversity within our species, despite a changing environment. The hypothesis presented is rarely acknowledged in current literature on the subject and Jouvet has little to support his hypthesis.

I was left with many more questions than I started with, but that could be good. The translation is mediocre but Jouvet throws in some kind of houty chuckles every once in a while that make it bearable.

If you want to read a very comprehensive, readable and informative book on sleep, I would recommend 'Sleep' by J.Allan Hobson.

This is an excellent work describing the new thought in the scientiic study of sleep. Finally, a work that describes why we see strange situations in our dreams without resorting to mysticism.

I am biased in my report in that I know the book intimately. I can only say that I am aware of no other leadership book that has captured the correct essence of where human leadership is and where it could go.

Yes, read the stories, and the author's words, but I challenge you to look beyond all that they have thankfully given us as simple stories and realize the potential of the type of leadership that they call post-heroic leadership. Forget the label of this leadership they communicate and instead listen to underlying message of Power Up.

John P. Kotter once wrote a poem that goes something like this..."beyond the yellow brick road of naiveté, past the muggers land of cynicism, there lies a narrow path whose entrance is hard to find and poorly lit. Once found staying on such a path is even harder. Undertaking such a path is a moral undertaking. We need many more to take such a path...many, many more." Power Up describes a way that might help you see your way down your own path better and a way that is good for all mankind.

I have always said that this book will never be a best seller, because that just means that a lot of people read it, but I believe that hundreds of thousands of years from now it will still be revered as a great work in promoting the understanding of improving human leadership. It will get there I think, because of those few souls who read it and understand.

I will fight by your side if your purpose is good, and I follow you if your path is pure.

Focus,
Thundering Eagle

The authors make the impossible seem very possible in this excellent book. The differences between heroic and post-heroic leadership is well defined through stories involving real people. Can an organization switch from heroic to post-heroic leadership, sure, but it is not easy. Somehow this book and its ideas make that ideal a bit more reasonable. Only for managers and leaders who are ready to go out on a limb and turn everything they thought they knew upside down. Good luck.

This book is one of the worst business books I have ever read. The authors are clearly on the gravy train trying to sweep up some more consultancy dollars.

This book basically breaks leadership up into two schools, the heroic school and the post-heroic school. The way it works is really simple. Anything bad, belongs in the heroic school, and anything good is post-heroic! WOW! This book is very one-sided and does not even try to entertain the notion that the most effective style of leadership can vary depending upon the situation. It continuously hammers home a certain style of leadership never exploring the situations where different approaches are effective.

I strongly recommend that if one wants to learn and think about leadership, read about leaders!....and by the way, the kind of leaders that we all admire do not even fit into this post-heroic category! This idealistic kind of approach recommended by academics lacks practical real-world substance, and only has value in a classroom.

I am considering using this book to prop up my dining table!

The book is extremely fascinating, but I am left with a feeling that this field of science is hopelessly underdeveloped. Why haven't we made breakthroughs in this field decades ago? And is this theory really brand new? Some of these ideas about consciousness seem rather mainstream to me. Of course, kudos must go to Taylor for making an obviously needed effort in a young field.

Author does good job in explaining area to readers who usually read Ophra books. Extremely fundamental. 75% of the world is illiterate, 20% of the remaining have technical agility to operate an automobile or computer, less than 1% of the remaining know how to build them. The cumulative knowledge of biophysical type knowledge generally requires at least graduate college work. For instance if I told you that human free choice was merely a matter of how long the hysterisis loops in your IPSP were established in the attractor would you know what was being said? (In other words is there a thing called choice?) Another example, all 5-HT of the SSRI catagory cause a frequency shift in the thalmic inhibition cycle, what does this mean in terms of drug therapy for other damaged cortical areas? Yes the information and the state of the science is there, but only for people curious enough to question.

O.K, I have tried to review this philosophically and have edited the result many times. I will now base my critiques on some evidence. First, Taylor proposes that posterior consciousness (phenomenal) emerges from circuits all in posterior cortex. These are suficient for posterior consciousness in his model. Now, experiments of decortication in monkeys of all but posterior regions make these animals (presumably-I will not go into reportability and animal consciousness issues) visually unconcious, and do not even retain blindsight. Second, imaging studies of visual (phenomenal) concsciousness show activation not only in posterior cortex, but also in anterior (Brodmn. Areas 46, 47, dorsolateral PFC).
Taylors main model is the 'relational' paradigm, that is for something to be conscious, its imput must be intermingled with past mamories and processing. Now some cases of severe amnesia are caused just because of inability to relate present imput to past memories or experiences. These patients are nevertheles conscious, even if they cannot remember the imput after some minutes. Relational-model necesary for memory, recolection, recognition, maybe even recall, but not apparently for consciousnes sin general. In fact, Taylor seems at times to equate consciousness in general with working memory, and this does not hold up completely.
Finally, he tries to explain qualia with "bubbles" of activity in cortex, his argument being that these phenomena have apparent similarity to the properties of qualia itself. But why must something in the brain be like qualia for it to be able to explain it? Are language areas like language? MT like motion? V4 milticolored? The amygdala fearfull? this is the fallacy of isomorphism. It is no argument to say that since something in the brain resembles a phenomenon, then that something is the correlate of the phenomenon.
The model is nevertheless quite complete -that is, he tries to explain a lot, and considers many pieces of evidence. I belive Taylor has gotten many things right, but not explained consciousness in a satisfactory way. Good read nevertheless.

De Souza's book is an interesting examination of a little-understood or discussed topic in philosophy, but it suffers from an excess of currently-fashionable subjectivism/skepticism.

An interesting book. It is also a unique book in that the author tackles a topic not many have dwelled upon in 20th century thought. He presents emotion as a kind of perception that guides or organizes reason, but I would like to have seen more on this since he touches upon it briefly. The rest of the book is an excursion into epistemology and the author's own thoughts and evaluations. The book would have benefited from more examples as well. Come with a rich vocabulary (e.g., homunculi) and be prepared to tolerate rereading and dense language in attempting to follow arguments. I am not quite sure about the intended audience, but it would seem to be editors of philosophy or psychology journals, or the staff of philosophy departments. The average reader would need 2 to 3 times the number of pages to understand what is being talked about. This is a pity because the topic is important. Interestingly he uses 'she' for general reference. Overall, although it seems to be more of a skeptical justification that is bogged down in the analytic, cognitive approach, it is worth reading for the excellent ideas but does require forbearance.

De Souza's book is an interesting examination of a little-understood or discussed topic in philosophy, but it suffers from an excess of currently-fashionable subjectivism/skepticism.

This book really has to be considered a failure, for although it is full of great old photographs, just reading a single paragraph is like listening to Ben Stein in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Typical of a dry academic treatise. Still, there are so few books out there on the subject... it is worthwhile.

I am a very apassionated researcher about the development of the great American and Latin American cities. I have found this book very useful for my researchs, with a very great amount of information and a very serious investigation on the issue . The main critic I have found is that the same thing could have been done in a more narrative and amusing way, to keep the reader interested in the reading.The story of New York has been dinamic and full of force, and nothing of that has been reflected on this book. Outside of that, I have really learned a lot about the issue, and it has really been very useful for my own investigations about the issue. I am an architect with a Master on Urban Economics in Buenos Aires, and all this literature is really important for my researchs.

As the title indicates, this book covers New York 'skyscrapers' (loosely-defined) from 1865 to 1913. The book begins with 5-story masonry buildings of the late 1800s and culminates with such landmarks as the Woolworth and Singer Buildings. The authors highlight the technical angle, and explain the developments that occurred in steel framing, foundations, and elevators, although the exterior aesthetics of these buildings also receive attention. Some space is allocated to hotels and apartment buildings; however, most of the book is devoted to office buildings. Best of all are the magnificent period photographs of early high-rises, about a hundred in all. Also, there are twenty floor plans.

What makes this book interesting is that it was written between the murders and the trial. Huie knew who the murderers were, how they did it, and never expected a guilty verdict.

The book introduces you in detail to Michael (Mickey) Schwerener and all the details leading up to his murder. This detail will help you understand exactly why and how these murders took place.

This latest edition includes updates by the author to compare his early speculation against the results of the trial.

I was given this book to read as an assignment in my Sociology class at college. I dreaded reading the book and put the assignment off as long as I could. However,once I started reading I could not put it down. Huie does a great job, through his interviews and quest for the truth, at putting you as close to the people and events of this historical time as one possibly could. It displays the most extreme and openly admitted amount of prejudice toward the African Americans held by the citizens of the state of Mississippi during the 1960's.

Huie may have written part of the story, but if you're using this for research, be aware that he did selective reporting. The alarm about the missing trio was raised by Louise Hermey, a volunteer who had traveled with the group and who was at the office when the station wagon was overdue. She spent the night trying to locate them.

"Before her stint ended at the COFO office in Meridian in the summer of 1964, Hermey said she briefly spoke to one journalist, William Bradford Huie, author of the 1965 book, Three Lives for Mississippi.
'He hung around the (COFO) office,' she said. 'I caught him making long-distance calls and kicked him out of the office. As he walked away, he said, 'You'll be sorry for this. I'll write you out of history.' '
Her name never appeared in Huie's book."

I'm wary of journalists who have personal agendas, especially spiteful ones.

A more accurate account of those events can be found in "We Are Not Afraid" by Cagin and Dray.

This is one of those books that art history students should use to learn the complexity of the field and the many different approaches to art currently practiced by art historians. For lovers of Impressionism, this is one of the deepest and richest studies of a single work-- and what a work! Manet's BAR is one of the most mysterious and gripping works of western art, and it's hard to imagine a work more deserving of this deep treatment.

As a lawyer who has clients involved in the art world, and has Manet (reproductions) on his wall, I have actually recommended this book to people who are thinking about applying to law school. While this may not make immediate sense to a non-lawyer (and may turn you non-lawyers off about the book), the different methodologies, lenses, sensibilities and sometimes inflexible dogmas through which the art historians view this iconic and enigmatic painting find amazing parallels in the wildly divergent theories and perspectives in which legal philosophers, professors and judges view and interpret the complex combination of factors (cultural, societal, class-based, psychological, political, authoritarian, libertarian, scientific, agrarian, industrial, religious, racial, tribal, etc.) through which what we call "the law" develops.

This is the sort of book that gives art history--especially the "new" art history--a black name. Most of the articles are written in deliberately inpenetrable prose, always hiding the the most inept questions and comments (i.e., "Did Manet really intend to paint the mirror that way?") Only Griselda Pollock's article shows any sign of intelligence. Another title for this book: "12 Ways to Kill any Interest in a Work of Art."

Parts of this book were copied from Steward Edward White's "The Forest," including the entire chapter entitled "Lying Awake at Night." Amazon has not printed this comment before, and I hope that future readers are either made aware of this before they buy the book, or that the book be removed for sale. Please compare the chapters, you'll find that the chapter I referred to has only a few phrases here and there changed, the rest is copied word for word. It is a shame that someone is making money from copied material.

I agree with the review of Moonchild87. An incredible adventurous story of how this couple made the change from city life to wilderness living. Well written with a few pics of some moments in their life while living as they did. Doubtless, an enjoyable read and is simply recommended if you like reading about these things or want to know what others experienced while making this transition in their lives so you know what to expect should you feel the urge to follow in their footsteps!

I really enjoyed reading this book. There was quite a bit of good advice concerning wilderness living and survival. Also included interesting tales concerning Brad and Vena Angiers experiences living in the British Columbia wilderness. I found the style of writing to be quite easy to read and the explanations to be easily understandable. Would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in living in the wilderness or just enjoys reading about people who have done it.

Maximilian West thinks about the women in his life as he lies critically injured, his thoughts taking him back to his youth in pre-WWII Germany and England, then on to his life as an adult in Europe. More of a fictional history of Mr. West than a study of the main women in his life, it's still a fairly consistently entertaining novel, worth the effort to read.

However, for me at least, for a book about a business tycoon it was awfully thin on the business side, the wheeling and dealing, hostile takeovers, buyouts, tender offers, boardroom antics, politicians bribed and competitors beaten, and awfully thick on who was wearing what type of designer dress and what style someone's 5th Avenue apartment was decorated in. But maybe that's a bit of a mismatch between the book's target audience and me. You be the judge.

This is a wonderful read, a big saga of a story which spans the years from Nazi Germany of 1939 to 1989, and features a cast of players both interesting and glamorous.
Maximilian West is the son of aristocratic, wealthy German Jewish parents, Ursula and Sigmund West, who absolutely idolise the clever, lovable little boy, and make him the centre of their universe. He is cared for by his Nanny, Teddy Stein, the educated daughter of their former friend and physician. When the Nazis begin their reign of terror in Berlin, rounding up and murdering the Jewish population, Sigmund sends Ursula, Teddy and Maxim to Paris to escape, intending to join them shortly. When he is prevented from doing so,Ursula leaves Maxim in the care of Teddy with instructions to take him to safety in England while she returns to be with her husband.The Wests had tansferred large amounts of money to their English bank so that Teddy is able to have the little boy educated properly and so that they want for nothing.After the war, they learn of the tragic deaths of the Wests in concentration camps, so Teddy continues to be Maxims' guardian until he comes of age. After finishing his education, Maxim proves to be a brilliant businessman and forges a vast empire which makes him a multi billionaire but also starts him on a rocky track with women, marrying three times and with many mistresses and love affairs. The story climaxes with the collpse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and, apart from one very short section, is a tale of wealth, glamour, beautiful people with beautiful clothes and houses. In short, it's a book to read when you want to feel surrounded by luxury and opulence....not a poor person in sight! I loved it!

Women of Substance was one of my all-time favorites.And Barbara Taylor Bradford followed that one with a number of books that, if not earth shattering "mind grabbers", were eminently readable. But in the last few months I have read several Bradfords that did not even begin to capture my interest. It is hard to believe that these books came from the same author. I have just finished The Women in His Life and was delighted to find a book that is right up there with Woman of Substance. You could almost tell from the first page that this was written by "the first Mrs. Bradford"! Wish the author would slow down, be less prolific, and give us more of what we know she can do.

For some reason, Amazon has not posted my review of this book (yet), though I submitted it almost four days ago. For those interested in my fairly lengthy review, it is at my blawg: veniaminov DOT blogspot DOT com, search for Melser. [I have tried editing my review to include my review in full. If it appears below, I was successful; if not, I feel your pain.]

As indicated by the laudatory quotations provided above and in the book's endorsement section, Derek Melser's _The Act of Thinking_ (AT) cannot be written off as easily as the reviewer, R. Jones, suggests with his 3-star mini-review. To call AT an update of the behaviorist paradigm is rather like calling Thomistic anthropology an update of Aristotelian anthropology. "Well, yes, I guess you could look at it that way, but, well...." Just as Thomistic anthropology "sublimates" various aspects on Aristotelian hylomorphism both out of its pantheistic, impersonal cosmology and into a Christian triune imagining of God in man-as-icon, so Melser's AT sublimates old school behaviorism out of its narrow operationism and into a holistic humanism of human action. To call Thomism or "Melserism" (if I may) updates of their general predecessors is to lose a whole lot in critical appraisal. My drawing a link between Thomism and Melserism is not completely irrelevant to further points I shall make in my review of AT.

The key difference between Melserism and behaviorism is that Melser insists action is a total-person reality, whereas behaviorism treats discrete actions as a series of impersonal stimulus-response data. (This hearkens back to Wittgenstein's objections to behaviorism as trying to force a 'physiological occasionalism', as it were, upon the seemingly autonomous order and timing of psychological operations.) Skinner need not have analyzed the personal role of action (as when he put his daughter in a glass cage for observation), since he is only interested in monitoring the discrete acts, or motions, that result from various stimuli. Behaviorists of yore were insistent that no matter how "lifelike" an action, or a series of responses, was, it gave no scientific justification for seeing in them anything really personal "behind" or "beneath" them. A "person" was just shorthand for what motions were under observation in a given time frame. Melser insists, in stark contrast, that we cannot work up to the personal level, but must begin, empathetically, with the person as the only proper locus of actions as such. This thesis leads him to some startling claims, for example, that humans are not even properly said to be biologically determined and that cognitive talk of modules, representation, neural powers, etc., are just as erroneous as Cartesian talk of a homunculus. There are only inner agents, or an inner agent, Melser says, because we allow our ingrained metaphorical speech patterns mislead us into reifying actions as such agents. Thinking is for Melser neither a "supernatural" power nor a natural ability (of the brain), but is simply something we, we persons, do. If we had not learned to perceive things as we perceive them, and if we had not learned to react to those percepts in the ways we do, and if we had not learned to signal responses as we signal them (usu. with words and gestures), we would not be conscious thinkers. Nor is thought a proper target of scientific scrutiny or explanation, since, Melser argues, recognizing, let alone understanding and explaining, action requires empathy, requires the action of being willing and able to "enter in to" the action being perceived. As soon as we zoom into the neural-synaptic-hormonal level of analysis we become not only overwhelmed in a welter of data, the sheer volume and minuteness of which do not lend themselves to synthetic comprehension, but also cease to study an action. We would only zoom in on various brain regions as we do because we already understand the larger actions which the neural analysis is supposed to explain. If we had to wait for brain scans to understand action, we would have never been cognizant of anything being there to explore neuroscientifically. Synapses are not actions, and thus a synaptic analysis gives us only that: an objective picture of synapses firing quietly to themselves. Melser's claim is that unless we add empathy, as person-agents, to the whole-action level of observation, presumably before the micro-level analysis, we can't say we have any scientific knowledge of the action. Indeed, Melser argues, it is impossible by definition to have scientific knowledge of actions. Science requires repeatable objectivity not influenced by human subjectivity, whereas as action-theory requires empathy and personal subjectivity. Is this really an update of behaviorism, or in fact its dialectical sublimation?

I admit that, given my middling familiarity with quantum mechanics coupled with my awareness of the old lure of positivism, I find Melser's discussion of empathy and objectivity a bit cursory (which is very much the tone of AT), but I still do strongly agree with his emphasis on the personal level as the proper mode of personal knowledge. Another author of the same mind is Mary Midgley; cf. esp. her _The Myths We Live By_. I also wrote a lengthy review of Midgley's book in "inFORM: A Catholic Review", which should be online in the near future at informmag.wordpress.com . Just an FYI for those interested in this line of thought.

One of the common criticisms against AT is that it is behind the times with respect to logical behaviorism and cognitive science. Didn't Austin, Wittgenstein, Ryle, et al., already say about thought--as a linguistic illusion--what Melser is trying to say? Doesn't neuroscience clearly prove thought is just a brain function? Knowing something about Melser's biography throws an interesting light on these complaints. He took an MA in the 1960s under G. E. Hughes, a former student of Wittgenstein, and then worked in the non-academic world until taking his PhD in 2001. This means that he got his MA in the heyday of logical behaviorism and then got his PhD in the thick of neuroscientific physicalism, which indicates he was not some entrenched curmudgeon, a barnacle on the ivory tower, who only gradually came to grips with this new-fangled brain science all the kids are talkin' about. Melser stands, was academically formed, in two worlds, having seen his foundational master's level thinking continuously and automatically challenged by the cognitive revolution of the 1990s--and yet he still sees greater merit in his personal action theory than in just-so brain science. Melser is hardly unaware of cognitive science; he simply thinks it misses the point, in a big way. As he states in his online journal (2007):

"...all the modern attempts at sciences of mind, language, and action will have to be abandoned. Psychology, cognitive science, linguistics qua science, evolutionary psychology, etc., and perhaps all the putative social sciences should go by the board. The problem is that, to the extent one adopts a truly objective, scientific attitude, to that extent the necessary empathic component is excluded."

The reason such "hard" sciences can and should go by the board, in Melser's opinion, is that because while they are designed to explore natural processes, thinking is not a natural process. It is not something our body does, and it is not even something we "use" our various organs to "do". It is simply how we imbibe, imitate, transmit, and alter culture as the entire ground of our consciousness. There is, for Melser, nothing natural about conscious, thinking, rational hominids. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, if rational consciousness is not natural, then it is supernatural, which leads me to my next, closing points.

Above I drew a connection between Melserism and Thomism, and in my title I mentioned not setting the clock far enough back. While it is true AT harks back to the mid-twentieth century in its logical behaviorist tendencies, I would say that what Melser is reaching for with his theory is in fact something more venerable--something quite like classical Thomistic hylomorphism (THM). This claim would almost certainly shock, and perhaps bemuse, Melser, but I want to make clear why I am right, if I read him correctly.[1] Melser is right to bring things like logical analysis and Reid's commonsense views to bear critically on neuroscience, but he should have kept regressing into the Middle Ages for an equally holistic view of human nature. To be clear: THM *does not* claim there is something immaterial "inside" the human body; Cartesianism claims that. Given its more fundamental commitment to a matter-form (or 'hardware-software') ontology, THM simply says that the way we account for humans' ability to rationally, freely, and uniquely act in the world, is by virtue of a rational principle called the 'soul'. Only because certain of humans' ends are immaterial (i.e., spiritual) can we say there is an integral immaterial principle of action which constitutes the human person. This principle cannot really be extracted from the concrete, embodied person, since it is just the formal and rational coherence of that very person. As Melser argues, we are not who we are from birth, but are born humans-becoming-persons. This aspect of human nature is not simply due to culture, since culture is itself informed by transcendent goods that need accounting outside 'mere' culture. We can transcend our natal biology because are by nature creatures that transcend biology. This is so by virtue of the soul. The soul is no more a ghost than the body is mere clump of atoms; both body and soul are simply the basic modes of human existence as demonstrated in substantial persons.

If he were transported back in time as I believe his theory urges upon him, the way Melser would have differentiated between natural (scientifically amenable) processes and personal, human actions, is to refer to the former as an actus hominis and the latter as an actus hominus (or 'human act' and 'act of a man'). The very fact, which Melser stresses in many places in AT, that humans have evolved cooperatively in accord with rational and supra-biological ends (i.e., culture) indicates that there is something ineradicably supra-biological about humans. Were there not already a power for acting rationally in light of transcendent cultural goods, or at least initially not some "field" of such ends dynamically ensconcing the evolution of humans, it is hard to explain how we became the sort of creatures we are. By analogy, unless there were a suitable atmosphere for winged flight, there would have been no way for flying animals to evolve the way they did/are. (Compliments to Fr. Edward Oakes for this point.) Indeed, as Melser argues in his introduction, since physical processes are not morally appraisable, nor subject to imperatives, they are clearly something different from human actions, which are morally qualified and subject to imperative commands (cf. Catholic Catechism §1749). As Grisez, Finnis, and Boyle (as well as Popper/Eccles) argue, strict determinism, which rules out free will and fully person-motivated choices, is inconsistent precisely by urging opponents to accept determinism, an injunction which only makes sense if there is "elbow room" for a free response. Physical determinism as a human theory of human action is self-refuting, since the very act of arguing for it assumes it can or 'ought' be accepted as true. (Is truth a "natural" category? Can natural states of affairs be false? Can they--whether as propositions riding air waves or ink on paper--be true?)

The lacuna in Melser's theory is that even when we 'concert' an action (i.e., do it in a visible, social way) or 'token' an action (i.e., in a 'private' incipient, aborted way), we don't KNOW what we are doing, since, for Melser, there is not only no faculty for non-behavioral, abstract knowledge, but also not even a 'field' of reality that corresponds to abstract ideas and truth. If all we have to go by is behavior, without an 'ambient' dimension of abstract truth, how do we 'know' Rodin's Le Penseur is not really thinking, but a person holding the exact same pose, indefinitely, is really thinking? To redress the lacuna in Melser's view, I would say that we know the content of our thought-acts because we function by virtue of a supra-behavioral principle for rational somatic order and action. Catching dualists and cognitive scientist by their metaphors is fine; but pretending (consciously or unwittingly) 'action' and 'person' or anything else is not equally metaphorical, as Melser does, is not at all fine.

The reason we cannot escape metaphors, as Melser argues at some great length, is not a shock to the Thomist, since for the Thomist, all creation is but an analogy. Our being is but a metaphor for God's being. Our somatic, concrete actions are but moving metaphors for the life of of the God whose image we bear. Reading AT, note how many times Melser flouts his own strictures on loose metaphors about thought (e.g., the mind boggles, we perform, we imagine, etc.). For instance, he sees in evolution (viz., the evolution of social cooperation) a 'mechanism', a word which he spends great time critiquing as but a metaphor. This 'mechanism' vis-à-vis humans 'involved' culture, which early humans 'used' to 'develop' social cognition. The reason all this terminology is inevitable and acceptable is because language is irreducibly metaphorical. (Indeed, look up the etymology of "metaphor" itself!) This is so because everything stands in rational relation to everything else, and it is the function of truth to articulate these constellations. Why are we able to orchestrate our bodily bits and motions into high-level metaphors if not because reality is irreducibly analogical? In Peircean terms, AT succeeds in going beyond the monadic reductionism of physicalism, but then fails by staying at the dyadic level of education and demonstration. What Melser should do to complete the impetus of AT is order the monadic physicality of, say, neuroscience and the dyadic relationality of concerted action according to the triadic mode of truth as rational relationality.

I highly recommend AT as a challenging, subtle, eloquent, plainspoken, amicable, contemporary discussion of the philosophy of mind.

Places I [strongly**] recommend a reader going after completing _The Act of Thinking_ are
James F. Ross's essays [**] "Immaterial Aspects of Thought", "Christians Get the Best of Evolution", and "The Fate of the Analysts";
David Braine's _The Human Person_;
Dennis Bonnette's _Origin of the Human Species_;
[**] Karol Wojtyla's _The Acting Person_;
and
[**] Adrian Reimers's _The Soul of the Person_.

Melser's book is an update of the behaviorist model of mind in general and Watson's theory
(Behaviorism, John Watson, Transaction Publishers, 1998, pg 214) in particular. The modern study
of cognitive systems is so clearly an interdisciplinary subject that it is simply perverse when
someone attempts it in such a one dimensional way. Today we can actually insert signals into brains.
We can measure neural responses. You need not stand outside the head. You can open it up,
go inside and poke around!