How To Be An Excellent Human
Subtitle: Mysticism, Evolutionary Psychology and the Good Life
Publisher: Earth Harmony Inc.
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Austin Texas USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780615727004
Copyright date: 2013
Description: How can we live good, fulfilling lives? How can we be happy? These questions have been at the forefront of philosophy ever since Socrates, and this engaging book attempts an answer. It addresses the big questions of life:

*   How should we live our lives?
*   How should we decide how to live our lives? How should we even frame the question in the first place?
*   What is it to be human? What are we like, how do we function?
*   What is our place in universe? How do we fit into the bigger picture? What is the bigger picture, the basic nature of all of reality?

The book is exciting and wide-ranging. It is incisive philosophy made accessible to the general reader. The author is equally at home lucidly explaining how mystics make sense when they say that all is one and how evolution has provided us with powerful but fallible mental capacities. The book offers an exhilarating journey with stops along the way to consider consciousness, panpsychism, brain science, quantum physics, how we are like and unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, where morality comes from, how our emotions both guide us and trip us up, how our thinking works, how it sometimes fails and what we can do to fix it. Throughout, it recommends an approach to life that maximizes well-being, leading to the possibility of happiness and abundance for all.

The book covers a lot of ground, but it is quite approachable. You can read it straight through as an intellectually exciting story. Or you can dive in anywhere, dipping into chapters that pique your interest. In either case you will have fun reading it, and you will be rewarded with insights and ideas that will stimulate and delight your thinking.
Table of contents: title: xi
label: Acknowledgements; title: 1
label: Part I: Setting the Stage; title: 3
label: Chapter 1, Introduction; title: 5
label: Chapter 2, Posing the Question; title: 9
label: Chapter 3, The Good; title: 13
label: Chapter 4, The Goodness Ethic; title: 16
label: Method; title: 19
label: Part II: The Broadest Vision; title: 21
label: Chapter 5, Our Place in the Grand Scheme; title: 22
label: The Mechanistic World View; title: 23
label: Process Metaphysics; title: 25
label: Panpsychism; title: 27
label: Inside And Outside; title: 31
label: Implications; title: 33
label: Chapter 6, A World Alive; title: 37
label: Chapter 7, The Quantum World: Oneness; title: 43
label: Chapter 8, The Quantum World: Agency; title: 43
label: Indeterminacy; title: 44
label: Causality; title: 45
label: The Brain; title: 47
label: Beyond the Causal Veil; title: 51
label: Chapter 9, The First-Person Point of View; title: 54
label: Who Experiences?; title: 57
label: Chapter 10, Speaking of the Self; title: 58
label: The Self in the World; title: 59
label: The Self and Others; title: 60
label: Self and Soul; title: 63
label: Chapter 11, All is One; title: 64
label: One Universal Interiority; title: 67
label: How Do We Know?; title: 67
label: The Nature of The God; title: 69
label: Divine Influence; title: 73
label: Chapter 12, Aspects of The One; title: 73
label: The One Expresses Itself In Activity And Repose; title: 74
label: The One Is Infinitely Wise; title: 75
label: It Is Useful To Pay Attention To The One; title: 76
label: Reality Is Good; title: 76
label: We Are All Connected; title: 77
label: Chapter 13, A Mystical Perspective; title: 77
label: The Goodness Ethic and Divine Guidance; title: 79
label: The Purpose of Life; title: 80
label: Loving God; title: 80
label: Alignment with Divine Will; title: 81
label: Duality of Good and Evil; title: 82
label: God’s Goodness; title: 85
label: Part III: Facets of Human Nature; title: 87
label: Chapter 14, What Are We Capable Of?; title: 89
label: Chapter 15, Humans as Apes; title: 97
label: Chapter 16, Evolution; title: 103
label: Chapter 17, Ways of Knowing: Cognition and Emotion; title: 103
label: Evolutionary Psychology; title: 105
label: Cognition; title: 107
label: Emotion; title: 109
label: Implications; title: 111
label: Chapter 18, Intelligence; title: 112
label: The Scope Problem; title: 114
label: Theory of Mind; title: 117
label: Chapter 19, The Overlooked Adaptation; title: 123
label: Traits of Undistressed Humans; title: 126
label: Humans are Good; title: 129
label: Chapter 20, The Human Virtue; title: 135
label: Chapter 21, Our Sense of Morality; title: 136
label: Moral Intuition; title: 139
label: Six Moral Domains; title: 140
label: Caring and the Prevention of Harm; title: 140
label: Fairness and Reciprocity; title: 141
label: Ingroup Loyalty; title: 141
label: Authority and Respect; title: 142
label: Purity and Sanctity; title: 142
label: Liberty and Oppression; title: 143
label: Analogues in Other Species; title: 147
label: Chapter 22, Ways to Say “Should”; title: 147
label: How the Mind Works Morally; title: 148
label: Philosophical Implications; title: 154
label: A Universal Morality; title: 154
label: Empathy; title: 155
label: Nonzero-sum games; title: 156
label: Rational persuasion; title: 156
label: Need for reason; title: 159
label: Chapter 23, Religion; title: 169
label: Chapter 24, When Intelligence Fails; title: 169
label: Self-Deception; title: 170
label: The Mating Game; title: 171
label: Reciprocal Altruism; title: 174
label: Social Hierarchy; title: 175
label: Summary of Self-Deception; title: 175
label: Maladaptation; title: 179
label: Afflictive Emotion; title: 181
label: Chapter 25, The Rider and the Elephant; title: 185
label: To Know The Good …; title: 187
label: Chapter 26, Being the Rider: Strategy; title: 191
label: Chapter 27, Being the Rider: Tactics; title: 191
label: Working with Habit; title: 193
label: Overcoming Afflictive Emotion; title: 196
label: Overcoming Distress Patterns; title: 197
label: Working with Instinct; title: 199
label: Chapter 28, Summary: What Is It About Humans?; title: 203
label: Part IV: Conclusion; title: 205
label: Chapter 29, To Be Of Service; title: 209
label: Postscript: Why I Clean Up the Park; title: 213
label: Part V: Appendices; title: 215
label: Appendix A, The Good and The Right; title: 216
label: The Good; title: 216
label: The Right; title: 217
label: Confusion Between the Good and the Right; title: 217
label: Why It Matters; title: 218
label: Meta-ethics: Good vs. Right; title: 226
label: Advice: Use Goodness Language; title: 229
label: Appendix B, The Nature of the Good; title: 231
label: Goodness as Virtue and Intention; title: 235
label: Appendix C, In Defense of Panpsychism; title: 243
label: Appendix D, Truth; title: 243
label: Congruence; title: 244
label: Consistency; title: 245
label: Coherence; title: 245
label: Usefulness; title: 246
label: Confidence; title: 247
label: Non-Falsifiable Theories; title: 247
label: What Is Knowable and What Is Believable; title: 249
label: Notes; title: 261
label: Bibliography