The mind club: who thinks, what feels, and why it matters

The late Wegner (The Illusion of Conscious Will), professor of psychology at Harvard University, and Gray, assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, explore the qualifications of belonging to "that special collection of entities who can think and feel." Offering a bevy of examples, they posit that the degree to which a human, animal, or thing possesses an emotionally or cognitively sharp mind is in the mind of the beholder. For instance, when we dislike, fear, compete with, or lust after other people, we tend to dehumanize them. Conversely, when a technological object isn't working, people tend to humanize it. But it is in understanding the self that humans are perhaps most deluded; we're prone to "choice blindness," confirmation bias, and anthropocentrism. The fragility of self-knowledge is troubling, but may also be liberating. "If the self is merely a chain of memories, then it should be relatively easy to dissolve these links and melt away the distance between ourselves and others," the authors suggest. Wegner (1948-2013) died during the writing of the book, and Gray did well by his mentor, completing a very thoughtful look at the degree to which humans are, primarily, perceivers. Illus. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The late Wegner (The Illusion of Conscious Will), professor of psychology at Harvard University, and Gray, assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, explore the qualifications of belonging to "that special collection of entities who can think and feel." Offering a bevy of examples, they posit that the degree to which a human, animal, or thing possesses an emotionally or cognitively sharp mind is in the mind of the beholder. For instance, when we dislike, fear, compete with, or lust after other people, we tend to dehumanize them. Conversely, when a technological object isn't working, people tend to humanize it. But it is in understanding the self that humans are perhaps most deluded; we're prone to "choice blindness," confirmation bias, and anthropocentrism. The fragility of self-knowledge is troubling, but may also be liberating. "If the self is merely a chain of memories, then it should be relatively easy to dissolve these links and melt away the distance between ourselves and others," the authors suggest. Wegner (1948–2013) died during the writing of the book, and Gray did well by his mentor, completing a very thoughtful look at the degree to which humans are, primarily, perceivers. Illus. Agent: Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc. (Apr.)