THE BOOK OF MINDS

A journey into the concept of the mind, mixing neurology, philosophy, technology, and other disciplines.

Although everyone has a mind, few experts agree on its makeup. Ball, longtime editor at scientific journal Nature and author of Patterns in Nature and other books, delivers a fine investigation of the possibilities. He points out that early cultures awarded “mind and motive” to everything: rivers, rocks, trees, weather, gods. Regarding modern conceptions of “minds” in nature, the author writes, “our habit of treating animals as though they are dim-witted humans explains a great deal about our disregard for their well-being; giving them fully fledged, Disneyfied human minds is only the flipside of the same coin.” We use our minds to experience the world, but we can only understand the mind by using the mind. Yes, it’s tautological, but few readers will object to Ball’s efforts. Traveling the world and talking to experts, the author has learned that the mind is not the same thing as consciousness. The mind has been called the software of the brain, but that brings up artificial intelligence, a sore subject with computer scientists, many of whom have discarded the notion that brain function can inform AI developers. Despite impressive advances in neurophysiology, “we can examine the brain as a biological organ all we like, but we still can’t get inside the mind it helps create, and see what is going on.” On the positive side, he adds, consciousness is intimately involved, perhaps even synonymous. The mind maintains consciousness as “a uniquely human ability to build and sustain a picture of ourselves as autonomous entities with a history and identity.” By the halfway point, it’s clear that Ball is writing a book as much about consciousness as the mind. Many of his topics are among the hottest in neuroscience today, explored by scores of academics and popularizers such as Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, and Daniel Dennett. Building on their theories and others, Ball makes a useful addition to the literature.

A difficult subject lucidly illuminated, if not fully explained.