Author Gary Marcus April 23, 2008

Wednesday, April 23 at 7:00 PM
Meet New York University psychologist, Gary Marcus when he discusses Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind. Marcus argues that the mind is a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption, and ponders the accidents of evolution that caused this structure and what we can do about it.

Why are we subject to irrational beliefs, inaccurate memories, even war? We can thank evolution, Marcus says, which can only tinker with structures that already exist, rather than create new ones. Marcus (The Birth of the Mind), director of NYU's Infant Language Learning Center, refers to this as “kluge,” a term engineers use to refer to a clumsily designed solution to a problem. Thus, memory developed in our prehominid ancestry to respond with immediacy, rather than accuracy; one result is erroneous eyewitness testimony in courtrooms. In describing the results of studies of human perception, cognition and beliefs, Marcus encapsulates how the mind is contaminated by emotions, moods, desires, goals, and simple self-interest.... The mind's fragility, he says, is demonstrated by mental illness, which seems to have no adaptive purpose. In a concluding chapter, Marcus offers a baker's dozen of suggestions for getting around the brain's flaws and achieving true wisdom.

Bio:

Gary Marcus is a professor of psychology at New York University and director of the NYU Infant Language Learning Center. A high school dropout, Marcus received his Ph.D. at age twenty-three from MIT, where he was mentored by Steven Pinker. He was a tenured professor by age thirty. The author of The Birth of the Mind and editor of the Norton Psychology Reader, he has been a fellow at the prestigious Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, and other major publications.

Official Website: http://www.booksinc.net