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No ghost in the machine
No Ghost in the Machine John C. Eccles
CH6611Contra, Switzerland.
by Rodney Cotterill, Heinemann, 1989. £14.95 (341 pages) ISBN 0 434 14 607 2
As implied in the publisher's blurb on the jacket, the author tries to achieve notoriety by provocation in asserting that the soul is mankind's greatest self delusion hence the strange title No Ghost in the Machine. It is disappointing to find that there is no reference to 'ghost' in the subject index, and one has to make do with 'homunculus' used to mean the 'little man in the head'. And so we turn to chapter 4, for what should be the climax of the book, to find that it is entitled 'Exorcising the homunculus'. It is singularly disappointing to find 'homunculus' exorcised so obliquely and facetiously. Its exorcism is unnecessary, because the homunculus is a long-since departed illusion or invention. In fact the author is exorcising a (little) straw man, and the book's title becomes a rather stale joke. It is unfortunate that the author has decided to provoke because he writes a very entertaining text that is correct in its essentials and is fleshed out with stories of personalities and incidents that are mostly correct so far as I have been able to determine. It could be classed as a book of clever gossip. One minor error is on page 28, where, after a good account of his scientific discoveries, it is stated that Nicolaus
Hearing. Physiological Acoustics, Neural Coding and Psychoacoustics G. Rebillard InstitutNabbnaldela Sant~et dela RechercheM#dicale, INSERMu. 254, Laboratoirede Neurobiologiede /'Audition, H6pitalSt Charles,34059 MontpellierCedex, France.
1.54
by W. Lawrence Gulick, Georges A. Gescheider and Robert D. Frisina, Oxford University Press, 1989. £35.00 (xi + 409 pages) ISBN 0 19 504307 3
This book, which is aimed at advanced undergraduates or graduate students, covers most of the field of functional hearing. From a teaching viewpoint, this book is excellent. The text is very clear and the figures, either borrowed from the literature or drawn specially to illustrate the
Steno had been elevated to 'sainthood'. Actually he was beatified in St Peter's on 22 October 1988, not canonized. That brings me to state that the book is disfigured by its many cheap attacks on religion, the soul and freedom of the will. But in extenuation one has to realize that the author subscribes to another religion known as 'religious humanism'. His antireligious bias is just a regrettable example of religious intolerance! The attack on free-will and moral responsibility is based on a crude misunderstanding of the brain. He states on page 257 that 'free-will might be mankind's greatest self-delusion'; he goes on to state 'My main argument against it' is 'that there is too much inherent and automatic control in the system to permit it!'. This is just a nonsense statement based on the author's inadequate understanding of the brain. It would reduce us, and the author, to robots! Moreover, on page 258 he confuses consciousness, which we share with higher animals, with self-consciousness, which is distinctively human. On pages 261-270 there is a long and very technical account of Libet's experiments on cortical stimulation, but it includes the common error that the train of stimulating pulses has to be for at least 0.5s in order to evoke a conscious experience. Actually this length of time is for pulses that just reach threshold. With
stronger pulses the time could be as short as 0.1 s. In explanation of the antedating procedures of Libet, I am quoted as saying that the mind can 'play tricks with time'. This refers to the wellknown distinction between experienced time and clock time, which is fully discussed in pages 529-530 of The Self and its Brain (Popper and Eccles, SpringerVerlag, 1977). Does Dr Cotterill accept this evidence? If so, his derogatory remarks on pages 267 and 268 should be deleted in subsequent editions. In the section purporting to establish that free-will is an illusion (pages 271-276) he rejects the idea of quantum indeterminacy playing any role because it is too small to have any effect on neurones. However, he misses the recent discoveries of the subtleties of synaptic transmission by exocytosis of a single vesicle on the presynaptic membrane, which could involve movement of a particle with a mass of 10-18 g (Eccles Proc. R. Soc. Ser. B Vol. 227, pp. 411-428). So Cotterill's dogmatism against free-wilt and moral responsibility need not be accepted on scientific grounds. In conclusion, Cotterill's attack on the soul has been based on old-fashioned materialism and prejudice. His understanding of the brain is adequate for a popular exposition in an entertaining book, but the book lacks serious scholarship in both neuroscience and philosophy.
text, are adequately chosen or designed. The pedagogical qualities of the book extend beyond its topic. A full chapter is dedicated to a historical review of the different theories of hearing that have been successively put forward over past centuries. The authors take advantage of this review to give the readers some general advice on the philosophy of science, which may be of use to those considering a scientific career. The scientific content of the book is complete enough to give the reader a good idea of the present state of knowledge within
the auditory sciences. Unlike most recent books on this topic, this volume does mention the latest findings, such as cochlear active mechanisms, motility of outer hair cells and acoustic oto-emissions. However, though they are mentioned, they are not included in some chapters where they could have been proposed, at least as an alternative explanation for some phenomena. For example, a reader only interested in cochlear mechanics would have some difficulty in understanding why basilar membrane (BM) mechanics was found to be different in cochleas from cadavers (B~k6sy, TINS, VoL 13, No. 4, 1990
CH6611Contra, Switzerland.
by Rodney Cotterill, Heinemann, 1989. £14.95 (341 pages) ISBN 0 434 14 607 2
As implied in the publisher's blurb on the jacket, the author tries to achieve notoriety by provocation in asserting that the soul is mankind's greatest self delusion hence the strange title No Ghost in the Machine. It is disappointing to find that there is no reference to 'ghost' in the subject index, and one has to make do with 'homunculus' used to mean the 'little man in the head'. And so we turn to chapter 4, for what should be the climax of the book, to find that it is entitled 'Exorcising the homunculus'. It is singularly disappointing to find 'homunculus' exorcised so obliquely and facetiously. Its exorcism is unnecessary, because the homunculus is a long-since departed illusion or invention. In fact the author is exorcising a (little) straw man, and the book's title becomes a rather stale joke. It is unfortunate that the author has decided to provoke because he writes a very entertaining text that is correct in its essentials and is fleshed out with stories of personalities and incidents that are mostly correct so far as I have been able to determine. It could be classed as a book of clever gossip. One minor error is on page 28, where, after a good account of his scientific discoveries, it is stated that Nicolaus
Hearing. Physiological Acoustics, Neural Coding and Psychoacoustics G. Rebillard InstitutNabbnaldela Sant~et dela RechercheM#dicale, INSERMu. 254, Laboratoirede Neurobiologiede /'Audition, H6pitalSt Charles,34059 MontpellierCedex, France.
1.54
by W. Lawrence Gulick, Georges A. Gescheider and Robert D. Frisina, Oxford University Press, 1989. £35.00 (xi + 409 pages) ISBN 0 19 504307 3
This book, which is aimed at advanced undergraduates or graduate students, covers most of the field of functional hearing. From a teaching viewpoint, this book is excellent. The text is very clear and the figures, either borrowed from the literature or drawn specially to illustrate the
Steno had been elevated to 'sainthood'. Actually he was beatified in St Peter's on 22 October 1988, not canonized. That brings me to state that the book is disfigured by its many cheap attacks on religion, the soul and freedom of the will. But in extenuation one has to realize that the author subscribes to another religion known as 'religious humanism'. His antireligious bias is just a regrettable example of religious intolerance! The attack on free-will and moral responsibility is based on a crude misunderstanding of the brain. He states on page 257 that 'free-will might be mankind's greatest self-delusion'; he goes on to state 'My main argument against it' is 'that there is too much inherent and automatic control in the system to permit it!'. This is just a nonsense statement based on the author's inadequate understanding of the brain. It would reduce us, and the author, to robots! Moreover, on page 258 he confuses consciousness, which we share with higher animals, with self-consciousness, which is distinctively human. On pages 261-270 there is a long and very technical account of Libet's experiments on cortical stimulation, but it includes the common error that the train of stimulating pulses has to be for at least 0.5s in order to evoke a conscious experience. Actually this length of time is for pulses that just reach threshold. With
stronger pulses the time could be as short as 0.1 s. In explanation of the antedating procedures of Libet, I am quoted as saying that the mind can 'play tricks with time'. This refers to the wellknown distinction between experienced time and clock time, which is fully discussed in pages 529-530 of The Self and its Brain (Popper and Eccles, SpringerVerlag, 1977). Does Dr Cotterill accept this evidence? If so, his derogatory remarks on pages 267 and 268 should be deleted in subsequent editions. In the section purporting to establish that free-will is an illusion (pages 271-276) he rejects the idea of quantum indeterminacy playing any role because it is too small to have any effect on neurones. However, he misses the recent discoveries of the subtleties of synaptic transmission by exocytosis of a single vesicle on the presynaptic membrane, which could involve movement of a particle with a mass of 10-18 g (Eccles Proc. R. Soc. Ser. B Vol. 227, pp. 411-428). So Cotterill's dogmatism against free-wilt and moral responsibility need not be accepted on scientific grounds. In conclusion, Cotterill's attack on the soul has been based on old-fashioned materialism and prejudice. His understanding of the brain is adequate for a popular exposition in an entertaining book, but the book lacks serious scholarship in both neuroscience and philosophy.
text, are adequately chosen or designed. The pedagogical qualities of the book extend beyond its topic. A full chapter is dedicated to a historical review of the different theories of hearing that have been successively put forward over past centuries. The authors take advantage of this review to give the readers some general advice on the philosophy of science, which may be of use to those considering a scientific career. The scientific content of the book is complete enough to give the reader a good idea of the present state of knowledge within
the auditory sciences. Unlike most recent books on this topic, this volume does mention the latest findings, such as cochlear active mechanisms, motility of outer hair cells and acoustic oto-emissions. However, though they are mentioned, they are not included in some chapters where they could have been proposed, at least as an alternative explanation for some phenomena. For example, a reader only interested in cochlear mechanics would have some difficulty in understanding why basilar membrane (BM) mechanics was found to be different in cochleas from cadavers (B~k6sy, TINS, VoL 13, No. 4, 1990