Alwyn Scott (1995) presents a useful summary of mind/brain philosophizing, listing a good sample of key thoughts on the sublect including those from William James, George Santayana, B. F. Skinner, Donald Hebb, Erwin Schrodinger, Alan Turing, Eugene Wigner, Roger Sperry, Karl Popper, John Eccles, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Christof Kock, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Erich Harth, Henry Stapp, and David Chalmers.

Scott's journey up the "great chain of causality" from physics to chemistry to biology to anthropology (with the [nearly] obligatory artificial intelligence and computer brain modeling side step) is well formulated and its clarity is almost an improvement on Douglas Hofstadter's handling of the hierarchy in 1979.

Chapter 4 (The Nerve Afire) and chapter 5 (Is There a Computer in Your Head?) is where Scott's own scientific experiences in electrophysiology speak loudest. The biggest problem with this book is that Scott's Mathematician's bias shows through. Scott can't entirely escape the lure of Platonic essentialism and the dream that quantum uncertainty might explain the "mystery" of the mind. Scott is a dualist. He tries to excuse himself by calling himself an "emergent dualist".

Frankly, I am left wondering if we have a problem in semantics here. What is the difference between saying:

1) Life can be explained in terms of chemistry and physics

and

2) Life is an emergent property of complex collections of molecules

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For some folks, "materialism" and "reductionism" are words to be used in the same way Ronald Regan would use the words "communism" and "atheism". If Scott just wants me to say that Mind is an emergent property of the brain, OKAY! I can do that. Its just words. If I say it that way or if I say I want to EXPLAIN mind in terms of brain, I am still left with the same task: I need to study the details of brain and behavior. It seems that Scott's approach of saying MIND is an emergent property allows folks to avoid the hard work of figuring out the biology of the brain. If MIND is just an emergent property of complex brain tissue, then people like Scott are tempted to just list MIND as a fundamental property of the universe and feel they are done. I guess that is fine for philosophizing mathematicians, but it is really a cheat.

I guess the worst thing about Scott's book is when he does things like characterize Francis Crick as a dualist. It's like calling a democrat a "Liberal" or a socialist a "communist'. It is a fun game to play if you can catch people who are hiding under the wrong label, but it is a stupid game to play if you are wrong.

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