The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism

By Karl Popper and John C. Eccles

Book Overview

The relation between body and mind is one of the oldest riddles that has puzzled mankind. That material and mental events may interact is accepted even by the law: our mental capacity to concentrate on the task can be seriously reduced by drugs. Physical and chemical processes may act upon the mind; and when we are writing a difficult letter, our mind acts upon our body and, through a chain of physical events, upon the mind of the recipient of the letter. This is what the authors of this book call the 'interaction of mental and physical events'. We know very little about this interaction; and according to recent philosophical fashions this is explained by the alleged fact that we have brains but no thoughts. The authors of this book stress that they cannot solve the body mind problem; but they hope that they have been able to shed new light on it. Eccles especially with his theory that the brain is a detector and amplifier; a theory that has given rise to important new developments, including new and exciting experiments; and Popper with his highly controversial theory of 'World 3'. They show that certain fashionable solutions which have been offered fail to understand the seriousness of the problems of the emergence of life, or consciousness and of the creativity of our minds. In Part I, Popper discusses the philosophical issue between dualist or even pluralist interaction on the one side, and materialism and parallelism on the other. There is also a historical review of these issues. In Part II, Eccles examines the mind from the neurological standpoint: the structure of the brain and its functional performance under normal as well as abnormal circumstances. The result is a radical and intriguing hypothesis on the interaction between mental events and detailed neurological occurrences in the cerebral cortex. Part III, based on twelve recorded conversations, reflects the exciting exchange between the authors as they attempt to come to terms with their opinions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415058988
• ISBN13: 9780415058988
• Release Date: May 2014
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 614 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

About the origin of the free will

Eccles and Popper are not alone in their strugle against established scienctific thinking, mostly based on the axioms of a materialistic aporach to reality. Dietrich Henrich is one of the most underrated philosophers of our times and needs to be mentioned here on the side of the two. I say so because he has the capacity to explain the issues of the most prominent German philosophers, especially in that case where some of their most imminent statements were ignored today by sheer false interpretation on the bases of wrong set axioms. Henrich is a purporter and adviser to understand the will as subject, not as a willful" object, as many materialists do. There are still a lot of them among brain- researchers who think according to the Credo of evolutionists. This is in contrary of what brain-researcher and Nobel prize winner John Eccles and Philosopher Karl Popper stated in union. For them the brains was nothing more than a piano on which the piano player Spirit played. Even Eccles had experiments which should prove, if not that there must be something like the non-material entity, that there must be the nonsense of a molecular-limited personality. Man is not a mere gathering of molecules, instead in first line an acting personality. The molecules serve at last this purpose and lack self-purpose. The same goes for the brains. It is nothing more than an organ. It is not what makes man. Meanwhile there are many such experiments with the same result. The brains is capable of much, but not everything. For Popper, Eccles and Henrich it has been clear that the Thinking, if it wants to conceive itself as originating from material, contradicts its own existence. Worse than that these commitments in thinking lead to chaos, from which it stems thanks to evolution. But by far not all brain-researcher share this opinion. For Popper, Henrich and Eccles and presumably most normal thinkers it is difficult to understand how one can cling to theories when the facts contradict. That is also true for interpretation of data from experiments. For example in one test the probates had to press the keys of a computer keybord at their own will. They were free to choose whatever key they liked. It could be expected that in case of a pure materialistic procedure of the sense registration and sense processing it would at first start with an activity of the brains because of the activating of the will to press a certain key. Next would follow the pressing of the key and the feedback of the senses hat the pressing was done, accompanied by the activity of the brains to process the information. Astonishingly it has to be stated, that only after the pressing of the keys, or better after the decision of the will of the probate to press the key, there was any brains activity. Everybody would take this as hint, that the will of man is not at all at home in the brains, but in a spirit that can not be found or proved in a material world with material means. Already the popular