Reviews for Intentions in the experience of meaning

The average rating for Intentions in the experience of meaning based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-12-07 00:00:00 Amanda Winborne I enjoyed this, but will need to come back and study it more carefully after my first pleasure reading. Modell is a psychoanalyst on the faculty at Harvard Medical School who pulls together a lot of the threads I've been interested in over the last few years: embodiment, theory of metaphor, evolutionary and cognitive psychology, and neurobiology. His project is to counter computational, information processing theories of meaning with a constructivist and phenomenological approach grounded in current neurological research. I am especially drawn to his willingness to reinterpret (and if necessary, jettison) classical Freudian theory in light of current scientific and philosophical theory of mind. Early on he quotes Philip Roth on the decline of interest in exploring human consciousness: "I read the other day in a newspaper that Freud was a kind of charlatan or something worse. This great, tragic poet, our Sophocles!" (p.5) Interest in the modernist project was already on the wane in my now-ancient days as an undergraduate, and I admit I have given it short shrift in the 40 years since then. I must admit, however, that my life as lived has seemed more comprehensible through the lens of Kafka and James Joyce than through that of Daniel Dennett or Steven Pinker (Fodor and Putnam are way too technical for me). At the very least, Modell has prompted me to add The Interpretation of Dreams to my near-future reading list.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-03-13 00:00:00 William Lane This book could be my constant bedside companion. It was completely blowing my mind by Chapter 7 on The Uniqueness of Human Feelings, which differentiated between limbic emotions and human feelings in the sense that our immediate "primal" emotional sensations are transformed through our idiosyncratic consciousness (our experiences, prior emotional patterns and responses, our individual brain circuitry) into unique human feelings and all the metaphorical associations we correspond with those feelings. Its discussion of the significance of consciousness and how we can come to understand it (metaphor, intentionality, intersubjectivity, the construction of meaning, mirror neurons, etc.) goes forth brilliantly. The book's strength lies in its highly interdisciplinary approach, making it the most comprehensive conception of the mind I have yet encountered. A quality book with solid ideas and all the right support and counterarguments: definitely deserving of another future read.