Overview

This book is about the so called 4S challenge - how does or can or should someone say something to someone about something? This challenge is getting more intense day by day in our contemporary globalized world, increasingly connected by science and technology through telecommunication and all sorts of social media, where people are acutely aware of the diverse views on culture, politics, economics, religion, ethics, education, physical health and mental wellbeing, which are very often in conflicts with each other. This book arises from the reading of the dialogue between two internationally renowned and respected French scholars, Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, which explores where science and philosophy meet, and whether there is a place for religion in the 21st century. This book develops on the ideas Ricoeur raised in the dialogue about the need for digging deeper and a third discourse as a way forward to improve dialogues between competing worldviews and ideologies. It attempts to formulate a third discourse (as distinct from ordinary language as first discourse and various scientific or professional/specialist languages as second discourse ) to address the burning issue of fragmentation of the person through overcoming the alienations between established discourses of philosophy, science and theology, without doing injustice to the unique and indispensable contributions of each of these discourses. It argues that such a third discourse has to go beyond dualism and reductionism. To achieve that, this new way of talking about the lived experience of the person is going to take the form of a non-reductive correlative multilayered discourse that has the capacity to, as expressed in the language of the hermeneutics of Ricoeur, explain more in order to understand better.

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9781498513654

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Reviews

Michael Wong brings together neuroscience, psychiatry, theology and philosophy in order to illuminate the process whereby we weave together ordinary, everyday language with aspects of religious, scientific and philosophical language, in order to describe our human experience. This is a first-class examination of an important topic without which we cannot understand ourselves properly or speak clearly about what we know and experience. Those who think deeply will find his third discourse a rewarding concept. -- Brian Edgar, Asbury Theological Seminary In Ricoeur and the Third Discourse of the Person, Michael Wong takes on Ricoeur's challenge to generate a discourse that bridges the worlds of neuroscience and theological anthropology. The bridging discourse explores ways of talking about human experience and expression of personhood that resist fragmentation, reduction and the impoverishment of personhood. This digging deeper in Ricoeur's words is an onerous undertaking, much more challenging than the simplification through reducing personhood to a soul, a mind, or a function of neurons. Wong's hermeneutic bridge-building generates this ongoing third discourse that is reflective of neuroscientific advances as well as changing world views. As Wong's well-referenced synthesis attests, this is a richly informative and engaging discourse into which Wong's book invites and excites one to participate. -- Werdie van Staden, University of Pretoria In personal conversations with Paul Ricoeur, he told me that he was not happy he accepted the discussions with Dr. Changeux because they never understood each other and he felt they were like ships passing in the night. Only a person with Dr. Michael Wong's knowledge and experience in both neuroscience and Ricoeur studies could analyze the book What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, a dialogue between J-P. Changeux and Paul Ricoeur. Their dialogue was polite and each showed respect for the other, but it was two monologues. Neither spoke the language of the other. Dr. Wong proposes to analyze these two discourses and propose a third discourse. Dr. Wong's work is a major advance in Ricoeur scholarship and applies to many other challenges between the empiricist and materialistic language of science and the language of lived experience. -- Charles Reagan, Kansas State University

Michael Wong brings together neuroscience, psychiatry, theology and philosophy in order to illuminate the process whereby we weave together ordinary, everyday language with aspects of religious, scientific and philosophical language, in order to describe our human experience. This is a first-class examination of an important topic without which we cannot understand ourselves properly or speak clearly about what we know and experience. Those who think deeply will find his third discourse a rewarding concept. -- Brian Edgar, Asbury Theological Seminary

Michael Wong brings together neuroscience, psychiatry, theology and philosophy in order to illuminate the process whereby we weave together ordinary, everyday language with aspects of religious, scientific and philosophical language, in order to describe our human experience. This is a first-class examination of an important topic without which we cannot understand ourselves properly or speak clearly about what we know and experience. Those who think deeply will find his third discourse a rewarding concept. -- Brian Edgar, Asbury Theological Seminary In Ricoeur and the Third Discourse of the Person, Michael Wong takes on Ricoeur's challenge to generate a discourse that bridges the worlds of neuroscience and theological anthropology. The bridging discourse explores ways of talking about human experience and expression of personhood that resist fragmentation, reduction and the impoverishment of personhood. This digging deeper in Ricoeur's words is an onerous undertaking, much more challenging than the simplification through reducing personhood to a soul, a mind, or a function of neurons. Wong's hermeneutic bridge-building generates this ongoing third discourse that is reflective of neuroscientific advances as well as changing world views. As Wong's well-referenced synthesis attests, this is a richly informative and engaging discourse into which Wong's book invites and excites one to participate. -- Werdie van Staden, University of Pretoria In personal conversations with Paul Ricoeur, he told me that he was not happy he accepted the discussions with Dr. Changeux because they never understood each other and he felt they were like ships passing in the night. Only a person with Dr. Michael Wong's knowledge and experience in both neuroscience and Ricoeur studies could analyze the book What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, a dialogue between J-P. Changeux and Paul Ricoeur. Their dialogue was polite and each showed respect for the other, but it was two monologues. Neither spoke the language of the other. Dr. Wong proposes to analyze these two discourses and propose a third discourse. Dr. Wong's work is a major advance in Ricoeur scholarship and applies to many other challenges between the empiricist and materialistic language of science and the language of lived experience. -- Charles Reagan, Author, <i>Paul Ricoeur - His Life and His Work</i> Drawing from the dialogue in What Makes Us Think between Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, Michael Wong develops and extends Ricoeur's argument for a third discourse that seeks a semantic pluralism that brings into dialogue the different and irreducible discourses of neuroscience, philosophy, psychiatry, and theology. The book is an important contribution to contemporary assessments of the remaining vitality of disciplines such as philosophy against the challenge of the sufficiency of neuroscientific explanation of human consciousness and agency. Wong's professional training and experience in the several disciplines discussed contribute considerably to the sophistication and nuance of the analysis. -- George Taylor, University of Pittsburgh

Michael Wong brings together neuroscience, psychiatry, theology and philosophy in order to illuminate the process whereby we weave together ordinary, everyday language with aspects of religious, scientific and philosophical language, in order to describe our human experience. This is a first-class examination of an important topic without which we cannot understand ourselves properly or speak clearly about what we know and experience. Those who think deeply will find his third discourse a rewarding concept. -- Brian Edgar, Asbury Theological Seminary In Ricoeur and the Third Discourse of the Person, Michael Wong takes on Ricoeur's challenge to generate a discourse that bridges the worlds of neuroscience and theological anthropology. The bridging discourse explores ways of talking about human experience and expression of personhood that resist fragmentation, reduction and the impoverishment of personhood. This digging deeper in Ricoeur's words is an onerous undertaking, much more challenging than the simplification through reducing personhood to a soul, a mind, or a function of neurons. Wong's hermeneutic bridge-building generates this ongoing third discourse that is reflective of neuroscientific advances as well as changing world views. As Wong's well-referenced synthesis attests, this is a richly informative and engaging discourse into which Wong's book invites and excites one to participate. -- Werdie van Staden, University of Pretoria In personal conversations with Paul Ricoeur, he told me that he was not happy he accepted the discussions with Dr. Changeux because they never understood each other and he felt they were like ships passing in the night. Only a person with Dr. Michael Wong's knowledge and experience in both neuroscience and Ricoeur studies could analyze the book What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, a dialogue between J-P. Changeux and Paul Ricoeur. Their dialogue was polite and each showed respect for the other, but it was two monologues. Neither spoke the language of the other. Dr. Wong proposes to analyze these two discourses and propose a third discourse. Dr. Wong's work is a major advance in Ricoeur scholarship and applies to many other challenges between the empiricist and materialistic language of science and the language of lived experience. -- Charles Reagan, Author, <i>Paul Ricoeur - His Life and His Work</i> Drawing from the dialogue in What Makes Us Think between Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, Michael Wong develops and extends Ricoeur's argument for a third discourse that seeks a semantic pluralism that brings into dialogue the different and irreducible discourses of neuroscience, philosophy, psychiatry, and theology. The book is an important contribution to contemporary assessments of the remaining vitality of disciplines such as philosophy against the challenge of the sufficiency of neuroscientific explanation of human consciousness and agency. Wong's professional training and experience in the several disciplines discussed contribute considerably to the sophistication and nuance of the analysis. -- George H. Taylor, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh

Author Information

Michael T. H. Wong is clinical professor of psychiatry at Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong.

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