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Books

Virtual reality versus real reality: wisdom (and motorcycle maintenance) from Matthew Crawford

Divorced from other people and the real world, we are all becoming increasingly dehumanising, according to Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head

9 May 2015

9:00 AM

9 May 2015

9:00 AM

The World Beyond Your Head: How to Flourish in an Age of Distraction Matthew Crawford

Viking, pp.320, £16.99, ISBN: 9780670921393

The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You’re Not Looking Michael Corballis

University of Chicago Press, pp.184, £14, ISBN: 9780226238616

Bit of Kant, bit of Kierkegaard, bit of motorcycle maintenance. That’s one take on The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford’s philosophical polemic about how virtual reality is impinging on real reality. Actually, his targets in this book are Descartes and John Locke, with whom, he reckons, the rot started when it comes to thinking about the human person as a cerebral calculating machine, divorced from his own body and from the world around him.

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'The World Beyond Your Head: How to Flourish in an Age of Distraction', £14.99 and 'The Wandering Mind: What the Brain Does When You’re Not Looking', £12.60 are available from the Spectator Bookshop, Tel: 08430 600033

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