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    Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain
    Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain
    Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain
    Ebook332 pages6 hours

    Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

    By Susan Loomis

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    About this ebook

    “Big questions are Gazzaniga’s stock in trade.”
    —New York Times

    “Gazzaniga is one of the most brilliant experimental neuroscientists in the world.”
    —Tom Wolfe

    “Gazzaniga stands as a giant among neuroscientists, for both the quality of his research and his ability to communicate it to a general public with infectious enthusiasm.”
    —Robert Bazell, Chief Science Correspondent, NBC News

    The author of Human, Michael S. Gazzaniga has been called the “father of cognitive neuroscience.” In his remarkable book, Who’s in Charge?, he makes a powerful and provocative argument that counters the common wisdom that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes we cannot control. His well-reasoned case against the idea that we live in a “determined” world is fascinating and liberating, solidifying his place among the likes of Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, V.S. Ramachandran, and other bestselling science authors exploring the mysteries of the human brain.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 15, 2011
    ISBN9780062096838
    Author

    Susan Loomis

    Susan Herrmann Loomis is a well-respected journalist and the author of six best-selling cookbooks. She is also a contributor to American culinary magazines, a monthly columnist for the Conde Nast website, epicurious.com and author of a number of cookbooks.

    Read more from Susan Loomis

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    Reviews for Who's in Charge?

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    • 4/5
      An interesting study of the interplay between mind and brain. Predominantly through studying of patents who have had their corpus callosum severed, thus separating the hemispheres of the brain, the book exposes how our brains are organized and how the mind processes reality. While not an introductory book for the subject, it's not overly complicated. Neither is it overly simplified. It does a good job of explaining, and giving scientific evidence for, how we build a coherent personal narrative.All and all, it's a good book that takes a reasoned stance for free will.
    • 1/5
      Not a interesting work where the author jumps scenes in neuroscience
    • 5/5
      This is just an amazing book that takes you in a journey about the brain. You will be amazed by how the author managed to critically constructed the argument. The author used new and old psychological experiments to support the argument. It really well written and very well supported. It's one of these books that you have to read them twice in order to get the most out of it.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful book by a brilliant yet humble scientist. A great conjunction of brain science and philosophy.
    • 5/5
      "We are people, not brains."

      That sums up the thrust of Gazzaniga's argument in "Who's in Charge?", adapted from his 2009 Gifford Lecture, a thorough and accessible look at trends in modern neuroscience -- and the physical determinism they seem to imply -- and the all-too-real feeling that we are intentional, morally-responsible agents.

      The first three chapters cover basics of neuroscience. What brains are, how they work, what they do. Not much new here if you're familiar with other overviews of this research, but the foundation is still necessary. Chapter 4 is where the book really takes off, as Gazzaniga steps into a field dear to my own interests when he discusses chaotic systems and emergent properties. As much as this topic can be made simple, he does so, and paints a compelling picture of a mind-brain interaction which is both causally "upward" -- neurons and neural modules spread across our brains sparking and creating the myriad phenomena we'd call "mind" -- and "downward" as those emergent mental phenomena simultaneously constrain the physical behavior of said brain.

      He uses the metaphor of a car's relationship to traffic. The entire concept of "traffic" only becomes possible when you have cars and a specific set of environmental conditions in effect. Take any of those ingredients away and you have nothing. Yet, even though traffic emerges from the interaction of cars, sitting in rush hour demonstrates all too well how the traffic can constrain the behavior of any given vehicle. This complementarity between the pieces working up and the whole working down is the ingredient missing from the determinist viewpoint (symbolized so widely by Benjamin Libet's experiments) and, in Gazzaniga's view, is what allows us to transcend that simple model of human agency. There is no "thing" in the brain to symbolize intentionality; only a storm of causes and effects beyond our (or anyone's) ken to predict based on purely physical laws.

      We are indeed more than predictable machines, and this has ramifications for both our social interactions and our legal structures, which are tackled in chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 goes into much detail on responsibility, which Gazzaniga treats as a social construct. After divorcing our notion of "free will" from the illusory notions generated by a distributed brain, he elaborates on the similarly emergent structures of society and culture. This chapter alone is worth it for the far-reaching implications in the discussions of gene assimilation and niche construction, which form the basis of a co-evolution between organisms and environments (both physical and social) in another instance of complementary upward and downward causation. This should be mandatory reading for anyone who thinks the Paleo Diet has any merit to its scientific justifications.

      All in all this is a fantastic book that falls into my must-read list for anyone interested in philosophy of mind, neuroscience, ethics, and/or moral philosophy.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      What exactly is the I we think we are? Where does it come from, and is it really in charge? These are the questions tackled in this book, along with issues such as responsibility and how the current neuroscience applies to our society and the law.This is not a very long read, and there are other books out there that go more in-depth, but this one seems a great introduction to what we currently know of how the brain works and the dilemma of determinism over free will. The author explores why determinism alone may not be the final answer on free will, including how chaos theory plays into it and how the final emergent property we call consciousness may rely on all of the sub-systems in the brain.I highly recommend this book if you want to begin exploring such topics, and aren't afraid of how it may challenge long held superstitions and beliefs.
    • 5/5
      This is an interesting, engaging discussion about the current state of Neuroscience and the study of the physical brain and its implications for philosophical issues involving free will, responsibility, the law, society, and ethics. Taking the reader from the position that what our brains do is physically/causally determined, Gazzaniga attempts to show how we retain personal responsibility for our actions.This is, by no means, light reading; but it is very accessible to people who are familiar with psychology, neuroscience/biology, or philosophy. Some college-level experience would benefit the reader, but one need not be an academic in order to understand Who's In Charge?. Gazzaniga maintains a conversational level of discourse, and does so pretty much without sacrificing the precision of more scholarly discussions. I am - by inclination, education and profession - a philosopher, and this book is right up my alley. I will, however, restrain myself from making any critical observations about the substance of Gazzaniga's work - even though, like most scientists, he completely misses the essential point that has divided philosophers and scientists for centuries (oops! My brain made me do it!).Very much worth the time, effort and reflection this book requires.
    • 5/5
      Think originally about that in each of us which most makes each of us who we are.

    Book preview

    Who's in Charge? - Susan Loomis

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