Two of this book’s ideas resonated with me. The first is that effort is more important than results. I think this is particularly true for people as they are growing up — you learn more from trying and failing than you do from effortlessly succeeding. I have found that children (mine and others’) respond more positively when praised for effort rather than achievement — they keep on trying, rather than just basking in the warm pleasant glow of approval.

The second idea, and one I wish more people understood, is the importance and power of apologising. This reminded me of Tim Harford’s TED talk, Trial, error and the God complex, in which he points out how important and yet difficult it is for us to admit our own infallibility. Our first reaction to being blamed is often to become defensive. This is usually counterproductive. From hurting somebody with a careless remark to needlessly invading a foreign country, so many mistakes can be at least partially remedied with a well-timed apology.

This book is a pretty good companion piece to Kathryn Schulz’s Being Wrong, which I read last year. I thought I had written about it here too, but I was mistaken. Never mind.

Some people think we now find ourselves in a sort of moral malaise — the old values have been thrown out and there’s nothing to replace them. Liberal attitudes to education are often blamed. But Law demonstrates that teaching people to think for themselves doesn’t necessarily result in these alleged problems, and in any case the current situation isn’t as bad as is made out.

I especially enjoyed the chapters on moral relativism. I have long thought that moral relativism is a well-intentioned mistake, and Law shows that teaching children to think for themselves does not lead to relativism: in fact it’s an excellent defence against it.

It’s probably unfortunate that Law uses the term “Liberal education” to describe the idea of teaching people to think for themselves. Especially in America, the “L” word is often misinterpreted to mean you’re a pinko tree-hugging unpatriotic terrorist-lover. That will probably lead to many people attacking the book without reading it, as Philip Pullman says in the book’s jacket blurb.

Probably the most useful thing for me is that the book exposes a couple of false dichotomies. We don’t have to chose between thinking for ourselves and following religious or other traditions; we can do both. Also, we don’t have to choose between authoritarianism and moral relativism; we can choose neither. By learning and teaching to question beliefs and think for ourselves, we can avoid falling into either of these traps.

Even if your political or religious beliefs incline you towards rejecting this book out of hand, you should read it anyway — and decide for yourself.

This clever, self-referential, beautiful book is a kind of fictionalised biography of a graphic novelist, as written by… himself. It’s also a mystery, since he has actually disappeared, and clues are pieced together in interviews with his family. There’s text, photostrips, and many comic strips. There are appearances from historical figures from literature, music and other arts. God is also a minor character. There’s a lot in this book — while reading it I had the same feeling I get when talking with a bunch of smart people. I learned some things, I saw things from a different viewpoint, and I had a lot of fun. And that is what I call a really good book.

These questions are just about the biggest and most difficult questions we can think about. I know what the answers are, but if you don’t, it would be worth your while to read the first half of “My Brain Made Me Do It” by Eliezer Sternberg. Sternberg raises the questions, discusses some of the evidence and research and identifies some current approaches. It’s a good exploration of the topic and it does get you thinking.

But when the time comes to try to answer the questions in the second half of the book, he jettisons the scientific approach and gives an answer based on homely folk understandings of consciousness and free will. There’s nothing wrong with folk wisdom, but this part of the book offers no new insights.

Sternberg worries that if all our thoughts and actions are subject to natural laws, then our actions are in principle predictable, and therefore we cannot be held morally responsible for them. But we’re only predictable in this way if the natural laws are entirely deterministic, and quantum indeterminacy indicates that randomness plays a part in natural laws. This means that our thoughts and actions are not predictable even in principle, even if our brains and minds are really just machines. This is a mechanistic viewpoint, which holds that our thoughts and decisions come about according to the laws of physics, but that these laws may incorporate enough randomness to make them unpredictable in advance.

If nature is not deterministic, but is actually mechanistic in a way that incorporates randomness, then our decisions are not predictable. But Sternberg makes it clear he wouldn’t be happy with this either. Determinism is not the problem.

Besides, you could argue that determinism is not just compatible with moral responsibility, but actually necessary. As Wikipedia says, “If one’s actions are not determined by one’s beliefs, desires, and character, then how could one possibly be held morally responsible for that action?” This interesting line of argument is not explored in the book.

Sternberg describes epiphenomenalism, which is the theory that our thoughts, decisions and actions operate mechanistically according to the laws of physics, and our consciousness is just a side-effect. According to this view, our conscious thoughts have no effect on our actions — they just seem to. My brain wiring and chemistry alters in a certain complex way, and that causes my arm to move up and my hand to scratch my nose. Meanwhile, these brain events also cause me to decide to scratch my nose. It’s an illusion that my decision caused the scratching; actually, the mechanical workings of my brain caused the decision and the scratching.

Epiphenomenalism seems counterintuitive. I thought it was nonsense the first time I heard of it (a long time ago), but now I think it’s true. Sternberg doesn’t. He spends an entire chapter attempting to debunk the attempts of psychologist David Wegner to demonstrate epiphenomenalism. Sternberg does indeed show that Wegner has not proved his case, but then he just moves on as if he has actually disproved it. We shouldn’t dismiss epiphenomenalism so readily — it may seem strange but I think it’s the simplest idea that could actually explain how the mind works.

The point of all this is that Sternberg wants to show that we have free will, and therefore that we are morally responsible agents rather than automata. He wants to show that we ourselves are responsible for our decisions. But he never properly discusses what this means. He briefly discusses the meaning of free will, but never says why he thinks we have it. He seems to believe that we have free will simply because it feels as if we do. But what would it feel like if we didn’t have it? That is an interesting and enlightening question. But Sternberg does not ask it.

And even if he could show that we do have free will, it wouldn’t help his case. Sometimes we have moral responsibility even for things that we have no control over, such as injustices perpetrated by our ancestors. If my forefathers systematically oppressed the indigenous people in our country, then many would say that I am partially responsible for putting that right. But this is irrespective of whether or not I have free will, since the injustices happened before I was born. Sternberg doesn’t consider this point at all.

Sternberg just can’t bring himself to believe that our internal thought processes could be the result of the mindless operation of physical laws. He tortuously walks us through some examples of human reasoning in order to show us that it’s all far too complex to be reduced to mere algorithms. But he shows no such thing. Yes, we all know that our thinking processes are very complex, but there’s no evidence that they are boundless. The problems that humans are able to solve are often ill-defined, difficult and fluid — but not infinite. A thinking algorithm would deal with such problems in the same way that we do: by using heuristics (derived from experience) to disregard irrelevant information.

I’ve glossed over a lot of points here, but that’s because I am only writing a short article, not a book (though that could happen one day). I’m disappointed that Sternberg’s book misses so many opportunities for fruitful discussion.

My Brain Made Me Do It is strong on neuroscience and good on some general theories of consciousness. But in tackling the really tricky issues of free will and responsibility it falls back to simple folk notions of consciousness. Recent neuroscience research has produced an ever-increasing amount of information about the working of the brain, and many people look to neuroscience to help explain conscious experience. Consciousness, however, remains just as mysterious and fascinating as ever. Science doesn’t yet have the answers — and neither does this book.

A few days later, I read an article by Michael Hofmann in the London Review of Books about the “professional controversialist and Austropathic ranter” Thomas Bernhard. Hofmann quoted a passage and said it “loops like a villanelle”. (The passage, a powerful yet demented diatribe, makes me want to read the book.) Encountering villanelles twice within a few days inspired me to write one. Very restrictive forms are easier to write in a way, since there are fewer choices to make.

Uncomfortable

A feeling that’s uncomfortable and new
Has filled your heart and clouded up your mind.
It seems that something’s happening to you.

Your old contentment’s slowly turning to
A strange sensation of a different kind:
A feeling that’s uncomfortable and new.

You used to know exactly what to do
But now you’ve left such certainty behind.
It seems that something’s happening to you.

Your thinking seems all tangled up in blue –
Wandering, unfocussed, ill-defined –
A feeling that’s uncomfortable and new.

Caught up in the turning of the screw,
However hard you try, you can’t unwind.
It seems that something’s happening to you.

You’ve been like this about a week or two
Since when you met her; now each day you find
A feeling that’s uncomfortable and new.
It seems that something’s happening to you.

The most famous villanelle (by a long way) is Dylan Thomas’s Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night (“Rage, rage against the dying of the light”). I also found another, lighter but still brilliant, at Cat and Girl.

A Kick in the Head is just one of many great kids’ books I’ve borrowed for myself while taking my boys to the library. They liked this one too — the illustrations are very lively.

Next step: set the poem to music. I’ll have to keep practising my guitar. The months just fly by!

I love TMBG’s regular albums, but their kids’ stuff is understandably not always my cup of tea. No! was pretty good, but Here Come the ABCs was just too simplistic for my sophisticated musical sensibilities. (My pre-school children quite liked it though.) But Here Comes Science is just about on a par with their best. I didn’t like all the “funny” voices on ABCs, but Science keeps them to a minimum.

Here’s Meet the Elements, the best song on the album and one of my favourite songs of the year. I love TMBG’s way with a melody, and that chorus… ah, that chorus:

You can sing along to it, and it’s even educational. Of course, being about science, there are a few mentions of evolution and even a line equating angels with unicorns and elves. This has attracted the ire of the creationist fringe in the US, which may make it more or less appealing depending on your own inclinations.

The album covers the scientific method, astrophysics, biology, green technology and more. (One song, Cells, reminded me of Jonathan Coulton’s brilliant That Spells DNA.) You might not notice all the information because the songs are so catchy and fun. But when you listen closely you will learn something. The Bloodmobile taught me things I never knew about blood.

The DVD has some clever videos for the songs, and also live performances by the Giants. Jay and Felix love watching the DVD, and often request the CD when we’re in the car. If you have children, get this CD. And if you don’t have children… get the CD anyway.

Thanks to Leslie for lending me this on a long plane journey many years ago. (2000, if you must know.)

I love the way that some of the word combinations lead to odd turns of phrase and overextended metaphors that you wouldn’t see in any normal book, such as

“My voice a light and airy soufflé, straight from the oven.”

“Roy nodded encouragingly, though his concentration had drifted out to sea in a small dinghy.”

The best part is that this method of construction isn’t arbitrary — in the end it becomes part of the plot itself. Very clever indeed.

Thanks to Wikisource and the wonders of copyright law, you can read The Art of Always Being Right online for free.