The Self and Its Brain

✍ Scribed by Sir Karl R. Popper, Sir John C. Eccles (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 1977
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 607
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The problem of the relation between our bodies and our minds, and espe­ cially of the link between brain structures and processes on the one hand and mental dispositions and events on the other is an exceedingly difficult one. Without pretending to be able to foresee future developments, both authors of this book think it improbable that the problem will ever be solved, in the sense that we shall really understand this relation. We think that no more can be expected than to make a little progress here or there. We have written this book in the hope that we have been able to do so. We are conscious of the fact that what we have done is very conjectur­ al and very modest. We are aware of our fallibility; yet we believe in the intrinsic value of every human effort to deepen our understanding of our­ selves and of the world we live in. We believe in humanism: in human rationality, in human science, and in other human achievements, however fallible they are. We are unimpressed by the recurrent intellectual fashions that belittle science and the other great human achievements. An additional motive for writing this book is that we both feel that the debunking of man has gone far enough - even too far. It is said that we had to learn from Copernicus and Darwin that man's place in the universe is not so exalted or so exclusive as man once thought. That may well be.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-XVI
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Materialism Transcends Itself....Pages 3-35
The Worlds 1, 2 and 3....Pages 36-50
Materialism Criticized....Pages 51-99
Some Remarks on the Self....Pages 100-147
Historical Comments on the Mind-Body Problem....Pages 148-208
Summary....Pages 209-210
Front Matter....Pages 225-226
The Cerebral Cortex....Pages 227-249
Conscious Perception....Pages 250-274
Voluntary Movement....Pages 275-294
The Language Centres of the Human Brain....Pages 295-310
Global Lesions of the Human Cerebrum....Pages 311-333
Circumscribed Cerebral Lesions....Pages 334-354
The Self-conscious Mind and the Brain....Pages 355-376
Conscious Memory: The Cerebral Processes Concerned in Storage and Retrieval....Pages 377-406
Front Matter....Pages 423-423
Dialogue I....Pages 425-436
Dialogue II....Pages 437-448
Dialogue III....Pages 449-460
Dialogue IV....Pages 461-470
Dialogue V....Pages 471-484
Dialogue VI....Pages 485-497
Front Matter....Pages 423-423
Dialogue VII....Pages 498-509
Dialogue VIII....Pages 510-520
Dialogue IX....Pages 521-531
Dialogue X....Pages 532-547
Dialogue XI....Pages 548-561
Dialogue XII....Pages 562-566
Back Matter....Pages 569-597

✦ Subjects

Psychology, general; Neurosciences; Medicine/Public Health, general