Mindwaves: Thoughts on Intelligence, Identity, and Consciousness

Are mindwaves brainwaves? Or is there a ghost in the machine after all? The mind exerts a special fascination in our inquisitive and scientific age. Is it an entity that exists apart from the brain? Or is it simply another way of talking about the actions of 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." Specialists in brain research, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, psychiatry, physics and computer science have written clearly and persuasively, with their own points of view. One of the most important areas of modern enquiry is opened up in this book to reveal its cornerstones and controversies, and even its further directions. We think that we know what we mean when we talk of mind. For the first time we can read an accessible account of what enables us to know at all.