Michael Wong brings together neuroscience, psychiatry, theology and philosophy in order to illuminate the process whereby we weave together ordinary, everyday language with aspects of religious, scientific and philosophical language, in order to describe our human experience. This is a first-class examination of an important topic without which we cannot understand ourselves properly or speak clearly about what we know and experience. Those who think deeply will find his “third discourse” a rewarding concept.

Brian Edgar, Asbury Theological Seminary

In Ricoeur and the Third Discourse of the Person, Michael Wong takes on Ricoeur’s challenge to generate a discourse that bridges the worlds of neuroscience and theological anthropology. The bridging discourse explores ways of talking about human experience and expression of personhood that resist fragmentation, reduction and the impoverishment of personhood. This “digging deeper” in Ricoeur’s words is an onerous undertaking, much more challenging than the simplification through reducing personhood to a soul, a mind, or a function of neurons. Wong’s hermeneutic bridge-building generates this ongoing third discourse that is reflective of neuroscientific advances as well as changing world views. As Wong’s well-referenced synthesis attests, this is a richly informative and engaging discourse into which Wong’s book invites and excites one to participate.

Werdie van Staden, University of Pretoria

In personal conversations with Paul Ricoeur, he told me that he was not happy he accepted the discussions with Dr. Changeux because they never understood each other and he felt they were like ships passing in the night. Only a person with Dr. Michael Wong’s knowledge and experience in both neuroscience and Ricoeur studies could analyze the book “What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain,” a dialogue between J-P. Changeux and Paul Ricoeur. Their “dialogue” was polite and each showed respect for the other, but it was two monologues. Neither spoke the language of the other. Dr. Wong proposes to analyze these two discourses and propose a third discourse. Dr. Wong’s work is a major advance in Ricoeur scholarship and applies to many other challenges between the empiricist and materialistic language of science and the language of lived experience.

Charles Reagan, Author, Paul Ricoeur - His Life and His Work

Drawing from the dialogue in What Makes Us Think between Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, Michael Wong develops and extends Ricoeur’s argument for a “third discourse” that seeks a semantic pluralism that brings into dialogue the different and irreducible discourses of neuroscience, philosophy, psychiatry, and theology. The book is an important contribution to contemporary assessments of the remaining vitality of disciplines such as philosophy against the challenge of the sufficiency of neuroscientific explanation of human consciousness and agency. Wong’s professional training and experience in the several disciplines discussed contribute considerably to the sophistication and nuance of the analysis.

George H. Taylor, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh