I think, therefore I am. The legendary pronouncement of philosopher René Descartes lingers as accepted wisdom in the Western world nearly four centuries after its author's death. But does thought really come first? Who actually runs the show: we, our thoughts, or the neurons firing within our brains? Walter J. Freeman explores how we control our behavior and make sense of the world around us. Avoiding determinism both in sociobiology, which proposes that persons' genes control their brains' functioning, and in (...) neuroscience, which posits that their brains' disposition is molded by chemistry and environmental forces, Freeman charts a new course--one that gives individuals due credit and responsibility for their actions. Drawing upon his five decades of research in neuroscience, Freeman utilizes the latest advances in his field as well as perspectives from disciplines as diverse as mathematics, psychology, and philosophy to explicate how different human brains act in their chosen diverse ways. He clarifies the implications of brain imaging, by which neural activity can be observed during the course of normal movements, and shows how nonlinear dynamics reveals order within the fecund chaos of brain function. (shrink)

In Being There, Andy Clark weaves these several threads into a pleasing whole and goes on to address foundational questions concerning the new tools and..

""Catching Ourselves in the Act" is no less than an attempt to explain intelligence. Delightful how the author dismantles traditional views in.

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a leading brain researcher show how the brain creates conscious experience.

In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide...