How Brains Make Up Their Minds

"It was obvious to the ancient Greeks, and the Egyptians before them, that all our plans, desires, and beliefs come from our brains. Descartes conceived the brain as the site of action of the soul, where it worked the valves regulating the flow of brain fluids like a pilot guiding a ship. Brain scientists today have dismissed the pilot, thereby creating "the mystery of consciousness." How can mere neurons, which are only little bags of chemicals, work together in brains and bodies to create the grandeur of human life, culture, and experience? How in a materialist world can we reinstate the pilot, the self in each of us, that endows us with the powers of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?"". "Four centuries of scientific investigation have culminated now in refinement of the tools needed to answer these questions. First among these tools are new ways to observe the flickering patterns of electrical activity that support the flow of our thoughts and feelings. Second among them are new mathematical theories for describing chaos and the creation of patterns where before only noise seemed to exist. Starting from a broad foundation in history, philosophy and neuroscience, Walter J. Freeman takes us in steps from single neurons to an explanation of our capacities for self-determination. The process is not easy to grasp, but comprehension is the best way to face down genetic and environmental determinism, apply our new biological knowledge in defense of our freedom, and accept responsibility for what we do with it."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Philosophy, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.