Description
How can there be sensory qualities - all that which gives meaning and value to life - if this world is really more or less as modern science tells us it is? This text proposes that physics describes only a selected aspect of all that exists - that aspect which determines the way events unfold.
A solid work of original thinking.
Maxwell has not only succeeded in bringing together the various different subjects that make up the human world/physical universe problem in a single volume, he has done so in a comprehensive, lucid and above all readable way.
...a bald summary of this interesting and passionately·argued book does insufficient justice to the subtlety of many of the detailed arguments it contains.
The Human World in the Physical Universe provides the best entrance to Maxwell's world of thought. This book contains a succint but certainly not too-detailed overview of the various problems and positions in the currently flourishing philosophy of mind. It shows that despite the fact that many philosophers have declared Carteisan Dualism dead time and again, with some adjustments, the Cartesian view remains powerful and can compete effortlessly with other extant views.
Ambitious and carefully-argued. . . . I strongly recommend this book. It presents a version of compatibilism that attempts to do real justice to commonsense ideas of free will, value, and meaning, and deals with many aspects of the most fundamental problems of existence.
Nicholas Maxwell is Emeritus Reader in Philosophy of Science at the University of London. He has written numerous books including The Comprehensibility of the Universe and From Knowledge to Wisdom.