About what you should expect from a chemist and a journalist. By the time you get to the brain in Chapter 9, the asides concerning Platonic Ideals become comic relief. They say, "Unfortunately, the mind itself is an elusive immaterial concept, so we are in danger of circularity unless we accept Cartesian dualism....." Are they serious? No, they immediately cite Edelman's approach to brains as a way to avoid dualism. They identify Roger Penrose as a champion of Platonic reality and say, "Sir Roger Penrose's argument about the elusiveness of computational consciousness is an important one, and we cannot easily dismiss it." And then they dismiss it and correctly suggest that in the future, complex machines that can learn the way people do should be able to have consciousness. After reaching such a satisfying conclusion, they can't help themselves from adding that the idea that consciousness can arise from mechanical systems does not threaten "the notions of chance, indeterminism, and free will so precious to us". What a relief! I recommend Dan Dennett's Elbow Room (see a review by Danny Yee) as remedial reading for Coveney and Highfield.

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