Brave New Mind: A Thoughtful Inquiry into the Nature of Mental Life

PETER DODWELL Brave New Mind: A Thoughtful Inquiry into the Nature Of Mental Life New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 262 pages (ISBN 0-19-508905-7, C$56.00, Hardcover)

Reviewed by LEENDERT P. MOS

The author poses the major question for cognitive science: "Can mental life be exhaustively studied as a purely natural phenomenon, or must we go beyond the mundane, the merely physical, to grasp its reality?" (p. viii). His answer is, that "absolutely no psychological consequence follows from a model couched in exclusively algorithmic, physical, or physiological terms, which is the way contemporary cognitive science proceeds" (p. 190).

Planned as a history of …