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Nick Chater
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The Mind is Flat Hardcover – March 29, 2018

by Nick Chater (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 312 ratings
A radical reinterpretation of how your mind works - and why it could change your life 'An astonishing achievement. Nick Chater has blown my mind' Tim Harford 'A total assault on all lingering psychiatric and psychoanalytic notions of mental depths ... Light the touchpaper and stand well back' New Scientist We all like to think we have a hidden inner life. Most of us assume that our beliefs and desires arise from the murky depths of our minds, and, if only we could work out how to access this mysterious world, we could truly understand ourselves. For more than a century, psychologists and psychiatrists have struggled to discover what lies below our mental surface. In The Mind Is Flat, pre-eminent behavioural scientist Nick Chater reveals that this entire enterprise is utterly misguided. Drawing on startling new research in neuroscience, behavioural psychology and perception, he shows that we have no hidden depths to plumb, and unconscious thought is a myth. Instead, we generate our idea
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  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    allen lane uk
  4. Publication date
    March 29, 2018
  5. Dimensions
    6.38 x 1.06 x 9.45 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0241208440
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0241208441
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ allen lane uk
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 29, 2018
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0241208440
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241208441
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.11 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 1.06 x 9.45 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #9,335,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 312 ratings

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Nick Chater

Nick Chater

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4.3 out of 5 stars
312 global ratings

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Customers appreciate the book's scientific research, with one review highlighting its clear articulation of hypotheses. They find the content valuable, with one customer describing it as phenomenal.

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5 customers mention "Research"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's research, with one customer highlighting its vast range of scientific studies and another noting its clearly defined hypothesis.

"...Using a vast range of scientific research, especially neuroscience, he brings the "mind" into the present moment...." Read more

"The book articulates clearly defined hypothesis..." Read more

"His premise is interesting, and I will go so far as to call it sound, but his presentation in many instances leaves much to be desired...." Read more

"Poorly written. Extremely tedious to read. Ideas espoused are impressive to those impressed by circuitous wordiness...." Read more

3 customers mention "Value for money"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book worth the time and consider it phenomenal.

"Phenomenal book. I will definitely reread everything I've already read abouy the subconscious with this in mind." Read more

"This is an interesting book that covers a lot of ground on modern psychology research...." Read more

"...If you "work with him" to realize the value of the book then it's worth the time, otherwise you're more likely to throw the book at something." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Jingo
    5.0 out of 5 stars Somehow, it is both trivial and profound
    Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2025
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    Background: I'm a cognitive scientist, so you would think a general interest book on the mind would have little to offer—think again!

    It's funny how it sometimes takes just one person saying something clearly to finally help us realize we've all sort of known all along.

    In this case, it's that mind is flat. That is, we're improvisation machines and that's all there is to what we are. We experience exactly what we are experience. There is no "subconscious", no deep and true inner self. Sounds edgy, right? Well, so what? Scientifically, we've known this for quite some time but we still find ourselves sneaking in mental wizardry throughout our studies and discussions.

    Though "The Mind is Flat"'s central premise is simple, even trivial, it has been a grounding influence on my work since I came across it. Which should be surprising to anyone who learns that I study consciousness—altered states, psychedelics, meaning, phenomenology. How can we even approach these things with a flat-minded ontology? That's the fun part. I'm grateful to Nick Chater for giving me so much food for thought.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Robert Jones
    4.0 out of 5 stars I like it but I don't agree
    Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2018
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    I like Chater's book a lot. I think some of it simply provides evidence once again that humans are not rational. (See, also, Predictably Irrational by D. Ariely, Harper, 2009.)

    Defining "thought" is something not everyone can agree on. Chater seems to be one of those people who thinks that only conscious thinking is "thought." On page 201 he says "...memories themselves are not thoughts..." "...they consist of mere fragments of past thoughts..." In connectionist terms perhaps they are "subsymbolic" and Chater defines only symbolic thought as being "thought." On page 180 Chater talks about "unconscious inference" and says that "...mental processes are ALWAYS unconscious..." Perhaps its these processes that are deep rather than flat (Shallow). THEY are what does all the work. I for one would include the subsymbolic content and its manipulation as part of what I call thought.

    One piece of evidence that the mind is deep is the organization of the brain into layers one on top of another. Many of us think this works something like the deep learning artificial neural networks that are so popular right now.

    It seems to me that we will want to make our AIs more rational. I think they need a value system. Chater doesn't even discuss the simple drives and aversions that seem to be what humans use in this regard.
    15 people found this helpful
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  • Leon A. Krier
    5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating!
    Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2022
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    Chater challenges the traditional psychoanalytic view regarding the unconscious, subconscious. Using a vast range of scientific research, especially neuroscience, he brings the "mind" into the present moment. The brain is this marvelous processing center of all the sensory data flowing at us every waking moment. This book makes a deep imprint of one's understanding of who and what we are.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Mind altering
    Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2019
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    Phenomenal book. I will definitely reread everything I've already read abouy the subconscious with this in mind.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Stefano Bertolo
    3.0 out of 5 stars Maybe the Mind is Flat for some things but not others
    Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2018
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    The book articulates clearly defined hypothesis (that your brain fools you into thinking that its model of reality is a lot more detailed and coherent than it actually is) and discusses in a very clear and accessible manner evidence in its support from various sub-fields of psychology and neuroscience. I fail to see, however, how this hypothesis could account for long term planning (the fact that when I wake up in the morning I don't only know that I have to go to work, but also where I work, what I need to do on that day, etc...) These abilities seem to require beliefs and desires/intentions that are a lot more stable and coherent than allowed by (my understanding of) Chater's hypothesis.
    18 people found this helpful
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  • J.B. Heaton
    5.0 out of 5 stars Mind-blowing and life-changing
    Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2022
    This book presents one of the most remarkable ideas you are ever likely to encounter: that deep well of the subconscious that supposedly contains our "true" self and all kinds of deep meanings unavailable to our conscious selves is a total fiction. Introspection is merely imagination. You are always and only dealing with the here and now by using processing that draws on retained (in a very incomplete sense) ways that you dealt with the here and now in the past. Sorry, Sigmund.

    I think this book will most challenge the beliefs of those who, like me, spend a lot of time in their heads, the "Ns" of the Myers-Briggs world, say. When I first met my wife, I worried - out loud to her, ridiculously - that she might not be "introspective enough" for me. I now realize it was I who was spending too much time unproductively introspecting and expecting to find hitherto unseen secrets of my past and present. Thankfully, she gave me a pass.

    Buy it and read it. It will blow your mind.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Alex
    4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Ideas, but Holes in the Theory
    Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2023
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    This is an interesting book that covers a lot of ground on modern psychology research. It advocates for a view of the mind that is "flat"--that is, doesn't have deep, unconscious processing. Some of the research reviewed on this is convincing that we over-estimate how deep our beliefs and thoughts go (we improvise more than we believe!). But the ultimate message falls flat as Chater tries to build it out into a coherent theory of How People Work. By about 4/5ths through I found I couldn't keep reading--there were too many internal contradictions and leaps in logic. I appreciate having read (most of) it, but I also found myself frustrated.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • George A. Jenkins
    5.0 out of 5 stars truth
    Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2018
    life is just fragmented puzzle-He explins why
    One person found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Çok iyi
    Reviewed in Turkey on August 17, 2024
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    Sağlam ve Hızlı kargo. Ayrıca kitap mükemmel tavsiyedir
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  • Cliente Amazon
    3.0 out of 5 stars interesting, a different perspective
    Reviewed in Spain on December 30, 2024
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    the book destroys the idea that we have an ego or a subconscious. With excelent arguments and proofs. However it is very technical
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  • Anthony Campbell
    5.0 out of 5 stars I love books that make you think, and this one certainly does that.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 16, 2018
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    Sigmund Freud did not invent the notion of the unconscious—in one form or another it goes back to antiquity—but he undoubtedly popularised it. Thanks largely to him, many people today think of their minds in terms of the iceberg metaphor, which implies that much of what goes on in our minds is mostly or completely unknown to us. The idea of the unconscious is deeply infused in art, literature, and many other aspects of our life; in fact, it is so widespread that it is practically impossible to escape.

    But why has it remained so popular? Probably because it corresponds with how we think of ourselves intuitively. (At least, this is true for Westerners; whether the idea is so deeply ingrained in other cultures I'm not sure.) And yet some psychologists and philosophers have rejected the notion of an unconscious mind. This where Chater stands, although, as he tells us, he came to this view only after a long struggle.

    "I have now, somewhat reluctantly, come to the conclusion that almost everything we think we know about our own mind is a hoax, played on us by our own brains."

    He has reached this position on the basis of what science has told us about visual perception and brain function. He demonstrates this by means of visual illusions and by asking us to perform mental exercises in which we try to manipulate an imaginary wire cube or describe how a tiger's stripes flow over its body without looking at a picture of a tiger. The aim is to show how inaccurate, incomplete and ad hoc is our apprehension of our surroundings, whether we are perceiving them in reality or imagination.

    Experiments have shown that our visual mechanism can focus on only one item at a time. The impression we have that we can take in a whole visual scene at once, at a glance, is an illusion constructed by our brains. And the same is true of our thoughts; we can think only one thought at a time. So there is no internal landscape in which unconscious thoughts can roam at will, and therefore there can be no unconscious thoughts. (This doesn't mean that there are no unconscious processes—quite the contrary.)

    This account of how our minds work is counter-intuitive, which is presumably why it is not better known generally. Psychoanalysis gives us a different picture which is more in accord with 'folk psychology' and therefore seemingly more plausible. But it emerged from a mistaken approach to psychology on Freud's part. Although he claimed to be a scientist, his method was essentially literary. He based his ideas on case histories—stories which he narrated with considerable literary skill, almost as if he were writing fiction, which in fact he was. But this is not science.

    This is how we experience characters in fiction. Chater illustrates this by treating Tolstoy's Anna Karenina as if she were a real person, bringing out what we know or might infer about her. The areas of knowledge and ignorance that exist in her case are similar to those that exist in our knowledge of real people and indeed ourselves. When we infer hidden motives, fears and desires in such cases we are making up stories of greater or lesser plausibility, no more. The principle of depth psychology is that, given the right techniques, we can infer what is going on 'inside', but we are creating verbal fictions, not practising science.

    "In this book I will argue for precisely the opposite viewpoint: that the charting of our hidden depths is not merely technically difficult but fundamentally misconceived; the very idea that our minds contain 'hidden depths' is utterly wrong. Our reflections on Anna Karenina's fatal act should point us, instead, to a radically different moral; that the interpretation of the motives of real people is no different from the interpretation of fictional characters. "

    This is not a long book but it packs a huge amount of insights into its pages (though I'd like to have had more discussion of dreams). If Chater is right, most of us will need to revise a lot of our basic assumptions about ourselves.

    "It is tempting to imagine that thoughts can be divided in two as the waterline splits an iceberg; the visible conscious tip and the submerged bulk of the unconscious, vast, hidden and dangerous. Freud and later psychoanalysts saw the unconscious as the hidden force behind the frail and self-deluded conscious mind."

    Tempting though it is, the iceberg metaphor is misleading. An iceberg is ice both above and below the waterline, so the metaphor implies that there can be thoughts at the unconscious as well as the conscious level. But the research Chater quotes indicates that "we are always conscious of our interpretation of sensory information, and we are never conscious of the processes by which these interpretations are created". So this is where the metaphor breaks down. The area below the water is completely different from that above.

    For C.G. Jung the unconscious was even vaster and more impressive than Freud believed. At its farther limit the individual unconscious merges with the boundless collective unconscious, which is like an ocean rather than a single iceberg. Here dwell the mysterious and enormously important archetypes, which, while never seen themselves, can radically shape events at the surface of consciousness and may appear in different guises in dreams. This, to my mind, is a more seductive image than that of Freud, and therefore even harder to give up. But although Jung, like Freud, claimed to be a scientist, his ideas seem closer to mysticism than to science.

    In fact, from a scientific standpoint it might be possible to interpret the archetypes as a poetic name for the always unconscious brain processes that Chater refers to. But there is far more to Jungian psychology than this, of course. The whole towering edifice of ideas that Jung constructed throughout his long life seems to me to resemble another literary creation that Chater introduces to illustrate his thesis, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Castle: "one of the strangest settings for a work of fiction—vast, misshapen, ancient, crumbling and architecturally idiosyncratic".

    Chater uses Peake's creation to illustrate the power of the mind's creativity but also its shortcomings.

    "Over the years, some committed and perhaps slightly obsessive readers have tried to piece together the geography of the castle from its scattered descriptions. Yet this appears to be an impossible task; the attempt to draw a map, or build a model of Gormenghast Castle leads to inconsistency and confusion—the description of great hallways and battlements, libraries and kitchens, networks of passages and vast, almost deserted wings can't be reconciled. They are as tangled and self-contradictory as the inhabitants of the castle itself."

    Much the same could be said of Jungian psychology, which has attracted a much greater array of interpreters than has Gormenghast. It isn't difficult to devote a lifetime to exploring the endless ramifications of Jung's work. But if Chater is right this would be a delusive enterprise.

    But is he right? If he is, many of us, including me, will have to make a pretty far-reaching re-evaluation of our ideas, and from what he writes that didn't come easily even to him. I don't know if I agree with him, but I love books that make you think and question your own ideas, and this one certainly does that.
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  • Marg Richmond
    5.0 out of 5 stars Arrived on time
    Reviewed in Canada on December 21, 2018
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    great
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  • Dr. Dietrich Klusmann
    5.0 out of 5 stars A bold idea that will probably turn out to change cognitive psychology.
    Reviewed in Germany on July 6, 2021
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    A bold idea convincingly presented! The book is well written with carefully selected examples and guiding metaphors, I even would say it was gripping. Probably an anticipation of the interplay between neuroscience and machine learning that will shape cognitive psychology in the future.
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