Mind of Its Own

by Fine, Cordelia

• ISBN13: 9780393062137
• ISBN10: 0393062139
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-07-01
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

Summary

A delightfully unsparing look into what your brain is doing behind your back. In recent years, we've heard a lot about the extraordinary workings of our hundred-billion-celled brain: its amazing capacities to regulate all sensation, perception, thinking, and feeling; the power to shape all experience and define our identity. Indeed, the brain's power is being confirmed every day in new studies and research. But there is a brain we don't generally hear about, a brain we might not want to hear about...the "prima donna within." Exposing the mind's deceptions and exploring how the mind defends and glorifies the ego, Dr. Cordelia Fine illustrates the brain's tendency to self-delusion. Whether it be hindsight bias, wishful thinking, unrealistic optimism, or moral excuse-making, each of us has a slew of inborn mind-bugs and ordinary prejudices that prevent us from seeing the truth about the world and ourselves. With fascinating studies to support her arguments, Dr. Fine takes us on an insightful, rip-roaringly funny tour through the brain you never knew you had.

Author Biography

Cordelia Fine is a research associate at the Centre for Applied Philosophy & Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(2)
The Vain Brain	3	(28)
For a softer, kinder reality
The Emotional Brain	31	(24)
Sweaty fingers in all the pies
The Immoral Brain	55	(24)
The terrible toddler within
The Deluded Brain	79	(26)
A slapdash approach to the truth
The Pigheaded Brain	105	(24)
Loyalty a step too far
The Secretive Brain	129	(22)
Exposing the guile of the mental butler
The Weak-willed Brain	151	(26)
The prima donna within
The Bigoted Brain	177	(24)
``Thug . . . tart . . . slob . . . nerd . . . airhead''
Epilogue: The Vulnerable Brain	201	(10)
Notes	211	(22)
Index	233