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

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Overview

“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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Are our actions determined solely by physical processes, or is the mind its own master? This age-old philosophical conundrum gets a terrific, if ultimately indecisive, analysis in this engrossing study of the mechanics of thought. Gazzaniga (Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique), a leading cognitive neuroscientist, draws on cutting-edge research, including his fascinating experiments with “split-brain” patients, to diagram the Rube Goldberg apparatus inside our skulls. Beneath our illusion of an in-control self, he contends, thousands of chaotically interacting neural modules governing motion, senses, and language unconsciously make decisions long before we consciously register them; the closest thing to a self is a brain module called “the interpreter,” which spins a retrospective story line to rationalize whatever the nonconscious brain did. (Brain injuries can make the interpreter tragicomically muddled, leading patients to claim that their hand doesn’t belong to them or that their relatives are imposters.) The author’s reconciliation of that deterministic model with the idea of free will is less successful, requiring “a unique language, which has yet to be developed”; until then, we can only invoke muzzy notions from complexity theory. Though he doesn’t quite capture the ghost, Gazzaniga does give a lucid, stimulating primer on the machine that generates it. B&w illus. (Nov.)

Library Journal

Gazzaniga (psychology, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique) takes us inside the workings of the human brain, exploring its known neurological functions and their contributions to the human sense of the conscious self and consequent behaviors. To what degree are we hardwired for behavior? What of genetics? How does human brain function differ from that of other members of the animal world? He highlights amazing research into split-brain cerebral functions and reveals a brain that can be localized and simultaneously diffuse in function. So do biological processes determine our behavior, trumping free will and letting us off the hook for our actions? Gazzaniga argues convincingly that they do not—that the influence of human social interaction on behavior disproves this deterministic theory. We are free agents, capable of overriding impulses, making conscious decisions, and regulating our behavior accordingly within social and ethical constructs. VERDICT A fascinating, accessible, and often humorous read for anyone with a brain! And a must-read for neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and criminal attorneys.—Judith A. Matthews, Michigan State Univ. Lib., East Lansing

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

The more we learn about the human brain, the more puzzling the question of free will becomes.

Forty years ago, cognitive neuroscientist Gazzaniga (Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique, 2008, etc.)—the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara—pioneered the study of the different functions of the right and left hemispheres of the human brain. Since then, it has become clear that what characterizes the human brain is not simply its size—after all, Neanderthal brains were larger—or even the greater connectivity of our neurons than occurs in the brains of our chimpanzee cousins. Neuropsychologists have established that the human brain is composed of specialized modules, local circuits that each operate automatically. "The end result is thousands of modules, each doing their own thing," writes the author, so that "our conscious awareness is the mere tip of the iceberg of non-conscious processing." This capability allowed us to create culture and technology, our hallmark as a species, but we are left with a disturbing question: "[W]hy do we feel so unified and in control" if our conscious experience is the result of "positive feedback" from modules that are each acting independently in response to environmental challenges? Gazzaniga goes on to pose the deeper question of whether can exist if "the thoughts that arise from our minds are also determined," as can be shown experimentally by brain scans. If the brain is made up of subsystems without any one locus of control, can the concept of free will have any meaning? The author examines this knotty question from many different angles and offers a simple analogy to explain how, in his view, consciousness and moral responsibility emerge from social interaction. In other words, the rules of traffic are collective and cannot be reduced to the behavior of individual cars.

A fascinating affirmation of our essential humanity.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061906107
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 11/15/2011
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 31,052
Product dimensions: 6.30 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.20 (d)

Meet the Author

Michael S. Gazzaniga is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute, the founding director of the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. He lives in California.

Introduction 1

1 The Way We Are 7

2 The Parallel and Distributed Brain 43

3 The Interpreter 75

4 Abandoning the Concept of Free Will 105

5 The Social Mind 143

6 We Are the Law 179

7 An Afterword 217

Acknowledgments 221

Notes 223

Index 243

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