Left: David Martel Johnson
Chase away the winter blahs: Take a front-and-centre seat at a book launch, informal question-and-answer period and reception at the Keele campus on Monday, Jan, 26. York University Bookstore is sponsoring the launch of York philosophy Professor David Martel Johnson’s new book, How History Made the Mind: The Cultural Origins of Objective Thinking (Open Court Publishing) from 4:30 to 6pm at the Bookstore in York Lanes.
About the Book
In How History Made the Mind, Johnson argues that what we think of as “reason” or “objective thinking” is not a natural product of the existence of an enlarged brain or a culmination of innate biological tendencies. Rather, it is a way of learning to use the brain that runs counter to the natural characteristics involved in being an animal, a mammal and a primate.
Johnson defends his theory of mind as a cultural artifact against objections, and uses it to question a number of currently fashionable positions in the philosophy and psychology of the mind.
About the Author
Professor David Martel Johnson, member of York’s Graduate Program in Philosophy, has edited (with Christina Erneling), The Future of the Cognitive Revolution (1997) and (with Demetra Sfedoni-Mentzou and Jagdish Hatiangadi) Aristotle and Contemporary Science – Volume Two (2000).
Johnson has been awarded a number of honours, including the Kenyon Prize Scholarship in Philosophy, 1960-1961, the Woodrow Wilson Fellow, 1961-1962, and a place in the 1974 Summer Institute in Early Modern Philosophy, Providence, Rhode Island.
Everyone is welcome. If you wish to attend, please RSVP Michael Legris, marketing and special events coordinator, York University Bookstore, at ext. 22078 or mlegris@yorku.ca.