The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising BrainIn a radical reinterpretation of how the mind works, an eminent behavioral scientist reveals the illusion of mental depth Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental "surface" of conscious awareness lies a deep and complex set of inner beliefs, values, and desires that govern our thoughts, ideas, and actions, and that to know this depth is to know ourselves. In this profoundly original book, behavioral scientist Nick Chater contends just the opposite: rather than being the plaything of unconscious currents, the brain generates behaviors in the moment based entirely on our past experiences. Engaging the reader with eye-opening experiments and visual examples, the author first demolishes our intuitive sense of how our mind works, then argues for a positive interpretation of the brain as a ceaseless and creative improviser. |
Contents
The Feeling of Reality | |
Anatomy of a Hoax | |
The Inconstant Imagination | |
Inventing Feelings | |
PART TWO The Improvised Mind | |
The Cycle of Thought | |
The Narrow Channel of Consciousness | |
The Myth of Unconscious Thought | |
The Boundary of Consciousness | |
Precedents not Principles | |
The Secret of Intelligence | |
Reinventing Ourselves | |
Other editions - View all
The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain Nick Chater Limited preview - 2018 |
The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain Nick Chater No preview available - 2019 |
The Mind is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and The Improvised Mind Nick Chater No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
ability able adrenaline Anna answer artificial intelligence asked attempt attention awareness behaviour beliefs brain Chater cheese-grater chess clue cognitive coherent colour and detail common-sense complex cone cells conscious experience cortex course create crucial cube cycle of thought deep emotions entirely example explanations face feel fictional Figure flash focus fovea fragments Gormenghast Gormenghast Castle grand illusion heads-up display hidden human idea imagine impose meaning impossible objects improvised inattentional blindness inner mental inner world interpretation intuitions invented jigsaw Kuleshov effect language left hemisphere lock looking mathematical memory traces mental depths metaphor mind motives nature networks neurons objects ourselves past pattern perception perhaps physiological picture pieces possible precisely problem psychology reason retina retinal stabilization rich scene seems sense sensory experience sensory information sensory input simultaneously solving split-brain story stream of consciousness task theory tiger unconscious thought viewpoint visual field visual world words