The Self and Its Brain (Hardcover)

~ (Author), John C. Eccles (Author) "Two things, says Kant near the end of his Critique of Practical Reason, fill his mind with always new and increasing admiration and respect: the..." (more)
Key Phrases: liaison brain, somaesthetic area, motor pyramidal cells, New York, Kegan Paul, Cambridge University Press (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

". . . anyone with an interest in philosophy, science, and the future of the world should read it." -- British Journal of Psychiatry

"...massive ...a theory of beautiful simplicity, with all the relevant data clearly set out down to recent research findings." -- The Jerusalem Post

. . . a massive achievement . . . a theory of beautiful simplicity, with all the relevant data clearly set out down to recent research findings.
–The Jerusalem Post

. . . anyone with an interest in philosophy, science, and the future of the world should read it.
–British Journal of Psychiatry --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

Distinguished philosopher Sir Karl Popper and Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Sir John Eccles argue the case for a highly distinctive view of the relation of mind and body. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 597 pages
• Publisher: Springer (October 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0387083073
• ISBN-13: 978-0387083070
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,400,553 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars About the origin of the free will, March 21, 2009

By	Roman Nies (Helibrunna) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (Paperback)

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 scientist Hoimar v. Dithfurt noticed that there is no reasonable denying of a non- material spirit.
Yet it would not have fallen from heaven but has so to say developed out of the material world. It is strange that the evolution purporters try a reinterpretation of the data. They do take for granted, that the will of man must be in the brains. So if after the pressing of the keybord activity in the brain is measurable it means simply that the human will is not free! This a dangerous misapprehension on which Henrich wants to hint. Science seems not to be able on certain (?) fields to think clearly, because she is hanging at their wrong axioms and apparently not getting free.
If man had no free will, instead everything is materially predetermined, he would have no more responsibility for his works. Can we hear out of this the old lie of the serpent which propagated the same consequences for human wrong behaviour? "Not at all you will be called to account!" Hitler and Stalin were no human monsters and Osama Bin Laden is not. They acted due to accidents by natural laws in the reach of molecules. We cannot help those who believe that!

13 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Overall disapointing and very open-ended., July 16, 2003

By	Kevin Currie-Knight "Education Grad Student" (Newark, Delaware) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (Paperback)

This is a book in three parts. The first, is on the self; written by philosopher of science Karl Popper. The second is on the brain; written by neurologist John Eccles. The third part is transcript of dialogues between the two. But here's the thing. They are both body/mind interactionists, or shall we say, dualists living in a world of materialism.

First, my obligitory disclosure. Eccles section is slow going if you are not well familiar with brain science, so my review focuses on section one and three. (I tried to read Eccles section, but it proved too much.)

Popper starts off by distinguishing three 'worlds' (not literal, but metaphorical) of things. World 1 is the world of physical matter; world 2 is the world of subjective thought; and world 3 is that of objective thought (thought translated into language, creative product or something else 'apart' from your subject. He then tackles what he regards as mistaken philosophies in the traditions of materialism and paralellism. As the book was written in 1977, most of the views he tackles - like the behaviorist assertion that mind doesn't really exist but as impulses - no one really believes anymore. As a result, much of this is not very exciting.

Both his section and the final section of dialogue between Eccles and Popper are very slow going in that Popper, in particular, rehashes his views on mind/brain interaction, the 3 worlds of thought and other previously published scientific views without explaining them or their relevance to his dualism as well as he could have. In the end, I was left wondering a.) is what Popper and Eccles wrote here all that interesting?; and b.) is it at all contreversial? In the end, I answered "no" to the first question - after all, even those of us who profess materialism are, in daily life, practicing dualists. To the second question, I answer "yes". Much of what Popper has to say is going to strike the reader as contreversial. I just don't think it - particularly his 'three worlds' theory - will strike her as relevant or accurate.

8 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Is this Good Science?, March 4, 2005

By	Murray Bowles (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (Paperback)

This book presents a very odd spectacle -- grown philosophers discussing a dualist theory of mind/brain interaction that is strikingly similar to L Ron Hubbard's theory of Thetan/meat interaction. It's especially appalling that Eccles drew the mind/brain line at precisely the point where the neuroscience of the day ended: we can find cells for feature recognition, so that's in the brain; we can't find cells for 3D object recognition, so that's in the mind. You would think that Popper's theories of what makes good science would reject this kind of thinking. Is the Mind of this book even falsifiable?

On the other hand, Eccles' section two is a well-written and unusually readable summary of brain research.