Theo Todman's Book Collection (Book-Paper Abstracts)

Amazon Product Description

1. 'Nowadays the most fashionable view is that the brain is a digital computer, but in my childhood I was assured that it was a kind of telephone switchboard; Charles Sherrington compared the brain to a telegraph system and to a Jacquard loom; Sigmund Freud compared it to hydraulic pumps and electromagnetic systems; Leibniz compared it to a mill and I am told that certain Ancient Greeks thought the brain functioned like a catapult. The very latest view among neurophysiologists is that the brain functions like a Darwinian natural selection system.'
   → from Mindwaves
2. One of the most important areas of modern enquiry is opened up in this book to reveal its cornerstones and controversies, and its future direction.
   • Is the mind an entity that exists apart from the brain? Or is it simply another way of talking about the brain itself?
   • What are the best models for understanding it?
   • Is the relationship of brain and mind like that of computer hardware and software?
   • Are computers a useful analogy for the workings of our own minds and if so how can a human mind have come to devise the analogy?
   These are some of the questions addressed in Mindwaves by specialists in brain research, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, psychiatry, physics and computer science.
3. The contributors are₁:
   Michael Argyle, Horace Barlow, Gordon Claridge, Stephen Clark, John Crook, Marian Dawkins, John Eccles, Hans Eysenck, Brian Farrell, Jeffrey Gray, Richard Gregory, Peter Hacker, Roy Harris, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Nicholas Humphrey, Ed Hundert, Philip Johnson-Laird, John Krebs, Rodolfo Llinas, Colin McGinn, Donald MacKay, Nicholas Mackintosh, Euan Macphail, Derek Parfit, Roger Penrose, Paul Seabright, John Searle, Anthony Storr, Janos Szentagothai, Herbert Terrace, Larry Weiskrantz.